About this Research Topic

Background

COVID-19 has continued to be a current global public health threat with high social and economic impact. With an urgent need for fast diagnosis, preventive and therapeutic measures, scientists all over the world have embarked on basic, translational and clinical research aimed at contributing to actionable knowledge about COVID-19. While our understanding of the risks associated with COVID-19 has vastly improved, several unmet medical challenges remain and effective treatments for severe COVID-19 are yet to be deciphered. We aim to encompass the new insights and knowledge gained by recent research discoveries in this Research Topic as well as highlight the research being done to accelerate the recovery from COVID-19 and its potentially life-threatening complications.

Effective prevention strategies capable of reducing the mortality of COVID-19 by preventing cytokine release syndrome, viral sepsis, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) or other life-threatening complications of COVID-19 are urgently needed. Furthermore, strategies capable of prolonging infection- or vaccine-induced acquired immunity against COVID-19 and its emerging new variants also need further attention.



There is an urgent need to identify affordable and effective treatments against COVID-19, especially with the emergence of new variants capable of escaping vaccine-induced immunity. International collaboration in the fields of mechanistic, basic, translational, and clinical research aimed at the identification of preventive and therapeutic strategies is of paramount importance as is the rapid dissemination of new information and insights gained from such research.



We welcome original research articles and reviews covering themes that include, but are not limited to:

• COVID-19 related pathophysiology in different organs (e.g. lung, kidney, heart, brain, gut) and biomarkers of disease progression, especially for patients with poor prognosis

• Pharmaceutical compositions containing vitamins and nutrients for the treatment of serious or critical COVID-19 with viral sepsis, systemic inflammation, and/or cytokine release syndrome Advances in the diagnostics and treatment of COVID-19

• Molecular mechanisms of disease progression, pathology, diagnosis and treatment. Advances in our understanding of the innate and acquired mechanisms of defense against the coronavirus

• Human genetic and functional genomic studies in population and patient cohorts aimed to understand mechanisms regulating COVID-19 susceptibility and severity

• Active compounds and their mechanisms in the context of pre-clinical and clinical pharmacology of drugs for the treatment of COVID-19 associated disease

• Patient-centred health outcomes of treatments and medicine regulatory aspects

• Impact of COVID-19 on the delivery of standard pharmaceuticals and development of experimental pharmaceuticals for immune-compromised patients including those with cancer

• Biomaterials and drug delivery systems for COVID-19 therapeutics

• Recombinant proteins and RNA therapeutics for COVID-19



Please note: Articles based on molecular docking or network pharmacology analyses without translational significance are out of scope for this Topic. We will consider such articles for possible publication only if there is new in vitro or in vivo experimental evidence of the translational significance of a specific target or intervention being proposed.

Keywords: COVID-19, pandemic, translational, preventative, therapeutic

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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