Researchers in the School of Animal and Comparative Biomedical Sciences scaled down their work on bacterial infectious diseases to focus on the community's immediate need amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Researchers in the University of Arizona College of Agriculture and Life Sciences are working to produce much-needed hand sanitizer for health care workers in Southern Arizona hospitals.
"With the goal of keeping our laboratory personnel safe, and also to do our part in 'flattening the curve,' we rapidly scaled down our ongoing research projects on bacterial infectious diseases," said Gayatri Vedantam, a professor in the School of Animal and Comparative Biomedical Sciences and a BIO5 Institute member. "At the same time, our entire group came to the realization that stepping back was not aligned with what we do as scientists."
"We decided to focus on the most immediate way we could help with the COVID-19 response. We realized that the hospital workers on the forefront needed things that would keep them safe – masks, gowns and hand sanitizers – more immediately than any kind of research we could do at this moment," said VK Viswanathan, also an associate professor in the School of Animal and Comparative Biomedical Science and a BIO5 Institute member.
Vedantam and Viswanathan study bacteria that causes infections in humans and agriculturally important animals. They've done surveillance studies to determine what bacterial pathogens are present in patients in local hospitals, and laboratory studies to understand at the molecular level how these organisms cause disease. They've also worked to develop diagnostic methods and non-antibiotic medicines for bacterial infections.
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