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The medical research solution to COVID-19 is more than just a vaccine.

Your gift will help us better understand and minimise the lasting health impacts from this pandemic.

The current health crisis has highlighted the importance of medical research in helping us combat infectious diseases. Since the localised outbreaks of SARS in 2002 and MERS in 2012, our knowledge in microbiology and infectious diseases has grown substantially allowing us to create better identification and detection processes.

However, there is still a gap when it comes to understanding the pathophysiology of the infection that this virus causes – that is how people get sick, what happens when they get sick and effective treatment methods.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to evolve, we are beginning to see the persistent ongoing health impacts that this virus can have. This remains true even for those who have recovered from an initial infection.

The Northern Sydney Local Health District (NSLHD) is fortunate to have a close collaboration between our hospitals and the Kolling Institute of Medical Research allowing us to incorporate our cutting-edge research into clinical practice. We have formed the NSLHD COVID-19 Research Group to coordinate our response and drive innovative clinical research for the district.

We need to raise $132,000 to assist in hiring a Clinical Trial Nurse to coordinate our COVID-19 Research projects. This person will ensure all projects meet governance requirements, liaise with patients to recruit for clinical trials and collect relevant information for analysis. They will also ensure the continuation of research, even as the prevalence of COVID-19 begins to decrease.

You can help us unlock crucial information that will lead to developments in diagnostics and treatment methods for COVID-19.

Our COVID-19 research group needs your support to ensure their research has a meaningful impact.

In Australia, we have had a relatively small number of cases and have done a great job controlling the spread. This means that in comparison to other countries, our researchers are better placed to explore the harmful effects of this virus beyond just those currently recognised in the short term.

The COSIN studyis one of our research projects focused on this, examining individuals who have had or have been newly diagnosed with COVID-19 by collecting blood samples and diagnostic swabs to Biobank for further study. We are trying to identify variation in patients’ immune and inflammatory responses to the virus.

If we are able to identify which immune system components are key to our body’s response, it may provide the insight urgently needed to develop new diagnostic antibody tests, identify potential vaccine candidates, pinpoint target receptors for antiviral drugs, and create methods to prevent damage caused by a person’s inflammatory response – from clotting in the lungs to strokes.

Another critical study examining the broader impacts of COVID-19 is the Australian Cardiovascular COVID-19 Registryled by Professor Ravinay Bhindi, a researcher and interventional cardiologist at Royal North Shore Hospital. More than 20 hospitals across Australia are taking part in this observational study, which will explore whether people with pre-existing heart disease are vulnerable to COVID-19, as early data from China and Europe has suggested. It will also examine the incidence and predictability of complications like heart attacks from COVID-19 infections.

Research from the Kolling Institute and the COVID-19 research group may also lead to an early warning detection test, dubbed ‘the smelly test’ which has been highlighted in the media recently and you can read more about here.

Our COVID-19 research group needs your support to ensure their research has a meaningful impact on our community and beyond.

Donate below, by selecting ‘Kolling Institute‘ and then ‘COVID-19 research group
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By making a gift today you will not only be supporting these two vital research projects but also studies being undertaken in our six key research areas:

Emerging treatments for COVID-19

Epidemiology of disease outbreaks

Infection prevention among high-risk groups (i.e. healthcare workers)

Health services data collection and research

Biomarker research for diagnosis and prognosis

Impact on health services and medical research unrelated to COVID-19

 

benefits of medical research extend beyond the lab