ULTOMIRIS | SUPERCOMPUTER | US-FDA | COVID-19 KIT | DATA SCIENCE | GAMERS

Home Test for COVID-19

LabCorp, a diagnostic maker for COVID-19 will provide first access to health care workers to take the COVID-19 test personally, who are eligible to swab the fluid sample from the nose but they need to send the sample to the testing laboratory. The US-FDA has issued authorization for home testing of the COVID-19 kit. The person will need to swirl a cotton swab inside the nostril. Self swabbing will be more accurate according to the analysis done by the United Health group.

ULTOMIRIS to enter Phase 3 clinical trial

ULTOMIRIS is also known as Ravulizumab which is a type of monoclonal antibody that is used to treat paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria(PNH) in adults. PNH is a genetic disorder in which defective  RBCs break down at the premature stage and leaks in the blood.

Alexion Pharmaceuticals has announced to initiate a phase 3 trial of  Ravulizumab that comprises 270 adults with severe COVID-19 and severe pneumonia or acute respiratory distress syndrome. This phase is to evaluate the safety and efficacy of the drug and the primary goal is to survive on day 29. The secondary will be the need for ventilators, ICU, oxygenation.

The action of a plan:

Weight-based dosing  will be followed on day 1.

           

Dose (mg)	Weight (Kg)
2400	40-60
2700	60-100
3000	≥ 100

           

            

Days 5,10,15 will be also weight-based,  patients weighing 40-60kg will receive 600mg of  ULTOMIRIS, and patients with more than  60 kg will receive 900 mg of ULTOMIRIS. The treatment follows up will be for 4 weeks and followed by safety monitoring.

 Folding@Home

PC owners ad gamers have created the world’s fastest supercomputer to combat coronaviruses. Volunteers will have to run the app that uses their PC’s processing power to help the researchers for the finding of coronavirus vaccine. The name of the application is Folding@Home,  this uses resources from 1000 computers around the globe to work through large sets of numbers and complicated problems. This outperformed the 500 fastest supercomputers in the world combined. Researchers are using this supercomputing brain.

Mechanism of work: This app’s processing power will be used to understand how the spikes of coronavirus enter the human cell. Similarly, many studies are ongoing to detect how the spike of the SARS-COV2 virus attaches itself to human cells, infects the body, and takes hold of it. This app will develop future treatments through simulations of how spike proteins work. Single PC might succeed in developing a part of the process. Around 700,000 new users have joined Folding@ Home and around 30,000 people can run the app simultaneously.

It has reached 2.4 exaFLOps of processing power. Summit, it’s the world's fastest supercomputer, belongs to the US department of energy. Summit can reach a peak performance of 187 petaFLOps that is equal to under 19% of an exaFLOP. This app splits up complex protein models into tiny tasks that are distributed to many users around the globe. This app allows PC owners to decide what percentage of their computer’s processing power can be used.