News within Clinical Medicine
Clinical Medicine Researchers are part of a €4.8M investment into a collaborative partnership at the university researching the immune response to COVID-19.
Professor Aideen Long, TCD Professor in Molecular Medicine at the Department of Clinical Medicine and Director of the Trinity Translational Medicine Institute (TTMI) and Professor Kingston Mills, TCD Professor of Experimental Immunology, Academic Director Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute (TBSI) are the leads on the project with investment of €4.8M in collaboration with researchers at University of Limerick and University College Dublin. It is supported by Allied Irish Bank (AIB) through the Trinity Foundation. International collaborators include leading researchers in USA, the Netherlands, France, Hong Kong and UK.
The investment is being made by Government through Science Foundation Ireland with further funding from the private sector. In April, AIB committed €2.4 million to back the establishment of the AIB COVID-19 Research Hub in Trinity to urgently accelerate the college's immunology project tackling the COVID-19 pandemic.
The collaboration brings together a strong multi- and inter-disciplinary approach, combining the leading expertise of Trinity College Dublin, with other national and international collaborators.
The research will seek to understand why some people are more susceptible to Covid-19 than others. The immunologists will develop, validate and deploy rapid anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibody testing in Ireland to identify previous SARS-CoV-2 infection in high priority healthcare workers and in the general community.
This will provide key data on epidemiology of the infection in the Irish population and allow identification of individuals that are 'immune' and therefore safe to return to work. The project will also focus on the design of effective vaccines and novel treatment approaches.
Co-Applicants from the Department of Clinical Medicine are :
- Professor Cliona O'Farrelly, Chair of Comparative Immunology, and co-chair of the Expert Advisory Group Research Sub-group of NPHET
- Professor Padraic Fallon, Professor of Translational Immunology
- Professor Colm Bergin, Clinical Professor of Medicine, and Consultant in the Department of GU Medicine and Infectious Diseases, St. James's Hospital, and co-chair of the Expert Advisory Group Research Sub-group of NPHET
- Professor Joseph Keane, Professor of Medicine
- Dr Clíona Ní Cheallaigh, Associate Professor
- Professor Ross McManus, Professor in Molecular Medicine