Vanderbilt University Medical Center has begun recruiting up to 250 participants for a Phase 3 clinical trial testing an investigational COVID-19 vaccine candidate developed by the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson.

Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center played a key role in the development of remdesivir, the first drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of COVID-19.

With cases of COVID-19 increasing among young children and adolescents in Tennessee, pediatric infectious disease experts at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt have started to see cases of a mysterious illness believed to be connected to COVID-19, known as multi-inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C).

Physician-scientists at Vanderbilt University Medical Center are investigating whether SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, can be spread through aerosolized emissions (microscopic droplets and particles) during minimally invasive surgery in children.

In late July, Vanderbilt University Medical Center will begin recruiting up to 1,000 volunteers in a late-stage study of an experimental COVID-19 vaccine developed by Moderna Inc. in collaboration with the Vaccine Research Center of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the National Institutes of Health.

An experimental coronavirus vaccine stimulated robust immune responses against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and raised no serious safety concerns in an early-stage clinical trial.

This week researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Gilead Sciences reported that remdesivir potently inhibited SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes COVID-19, in human lung cell cultures and that it improved lung function in mice infected with the virus.