Introduction

Special Section: KAUST’s Rapid Research Response to the COVID-19 Crisis

UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

“My experience of working with KAUST through the collaboration initiated by Vice President for Research Donal Bradley has been excellent. Professors Arnab Pain and Samir Hamdan have provided great feedback on our COVID-19 RT-LAMP test, with many useful insights into how to take it forward for clinical use. KAUST’s synthesis and delivery of enzyme reagents has been especially timely.”

Professor Zhanfeng Cui, Donald Pollock Professor of Chemical Engineering

Introduction

Following a call by President Tony Chan for KAUST principal investigators to contribute through their research capabilities to alleviate the COVID-19 pandemic, efforts coordinated by Donal Bradley, KAUST Vice President for Research, and Pierre Magistretti, KAUST Dean of the Biological and Environmental Science and Engineering division, mobilized a group of faculty to form the Rapid Research Response Team (R3T). The focus of R3T is to collaborate with and strongly support the Kingdom’s health care stakeholders to help combat the spread of COVID-19.

Efforts are focusing on the development of rapid diagnostic platforms, genomic analysis of the virus, and bioinformatic tools to help track the spread and evolution of the disease. These efforts are based on research projects and competencies established over the years at KAUST. They are also part of the Smart Health Initiative recently established at KAUST to implement joint research projects with medical centers in the Kingdom.

R3T’s group of faculty has been in close contact with the Saudi Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the Ministry of Health to coordinate efforts that will ensure fast and reliable diagnostic tests, as demand for the tests in the Kingdom and internationally will increase. Initial efforts are aimed at optimizing existing tests to decrease the amount of reagents used without compromising reliability.