06: Creating a healthier future for all

Arizona State University rose to the challenge of the COVID-19 crisis, but its work is far from over. Across the university, forward-thinking researchers from multiple disciplines are exploring the hard lessons learned from the pandemic and innovating solutions to safeguard the community’s health and well-being and prepare for future crises. Proactive, agile and collaborative, ASU identifies emerging challenges and builds the right teams and partnerships to create effective solutions.

ASU researchers are working to develop a vaccine that broadly safeguards against multiple coronavirus variants.

Overcoming the challenge of mass COVID-19 vaccination

Arizona faces a task of unprecedented scale: to ensure the safe, inclusive and effective deployment of COVID-19 vaccines to its residents. Though highly effective vaccines were developed in record time, the state is now racing to vaccinate enough of its residents to achieve herd immunity, the benchmark at which enough people are immune to the virus to stop its deadly spread. The deployment of COVID-19 vaccines poses logistical challenges, not only due to the volumes required, but also the intricacies of transportation and storage. The state has tapped into ASU’s expertise to overcome these logistical hurdles at a critical time.

Battling future viral threats

ASU is at the forefront of Arizona’s fight against the spread of new coronavirus variants. Viruses constantly change through mutation, and COVID-19 is no exception. New viral variants even more contagious than those that started the pandemic are emerging. Vigilant ASU researchers are already tracking many variant strains, including one discovered in Arizona that researchers say needs to be monitored closely because it carries a mutation known for weakening vaccines. To trace the trail of the virus, researchers are using next-generation sequencing at ASU’s Genomics Facility to rapidly read through all 30,000 chemical letters of the SARS-CoV-2 genetic code. ASU has also teamed up with TGen and the state’s two other universities to form the Arizona COVID-19 Genomics Union, which uses big data analysis and genetic mapping to inform health care providers and public policymakers in the fight against the pandemic.

Probing the “long-term” effects of COVID-19

A year into the pandemic, tens of thousands of Arizona’s COVID-19 patients still suffer debilitating symptoms — including fatigue, shortness of breath, “brain fog,” sleep disorders, fevers, gastrointestinal symptoms, anxiety and depression — known as “long COVID.” ASU partnered with Northern Arizona University, TGen, Arizona Department of Health Services and nine major Arizona health care providers to submit a $99 million proposal to the National Institutes of Health. The funding would support a long-term study of over 4,000 individuals to answer pressing questions: What is the underlying biological cause of these prolonged symptoms? What makes some people vulnerable to long COVID and not others? Did the immune system’s fight against the disease produce autoimmune effects? And most importantly: How can people suffering from long COVID return to health?

Looking toward the future of COVID-19 vaccines

As the virus that causes COVID-19 continues to evolve, it raises the risk that changes to its genetic code could escape the immune response triggered by current vaccines. In response, ASU researchers are focusing on developing a vaccine that broadly safeguards against multiple variants. Transporting current COVID-19 vaccines to immunization centers, clinics and health centers around the world poses challenges because the “cold chain” of cold rooms, freezers, refrigerators, cold boxes and carriers must keep vaccines at just the right temperature during the long journey from the manufacturing line to the syringe. The cold chain problem, along with two-dose vaccines, pose particular hardships for rural and low-income communities that ASU seeks to address through the development of a single-dose vaccine without stringent storage requirements.

We’re not just looking at this as a virus, we’re looking at this as a human experience. What is it doing to human lives? How can we step in and try to provide ways for people to productively move their lives forward? What did this teach us about vulnerable aspects of society’s systems that we need to fix?

— Neal Woodbury, Vice President of Research and Chief Science and Technology Officer, ASU Knowledge Enterprise