Penn State’s COVID-19 research capacities are formidable, and include:
• The Pell Lab, a BSL3 facility where we are working with the CoV-SARS-2 virus in-culture. This enables in vitro testing of drugs, convalescent sera, decontamination agents, masks, and diagnostics. Capabilities for animal testing of vaccines, anti-virals and therapeutics (cytokine inhibitors, et. al.) in this facility includes humanized ACE-2 mice and ferrets.
• Huck’s 11 Core Facilities remain open for essential research throughout this pandemic, empowering our teams with access to the state-of-the-art tools of Cryo-EM microscopy, genomics, metabolomics, and fermentation, among other relevant areas of research.
• 300+ Research Faculty with expertise relevant to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our scale and dedication to cross-disciplinary collaboration in the life sciences allows us to assemble outstanding teams of problem-solvers who can put together a bigger picture, faster.
• Additional capacities include research-use only testing of patients (virus, antibody etc.) and environmental samples (virus). BSL-2 reagents include spike protein, related coronaviruses, genomic DNA, synthetic RNA and plasmids encoding key proteins.
Inquiries about partnering with the Huck Institutes in our ongoing efforts to confront this pandemic should be addressed to our director:
Andrew Read
Senior Vice President for Research; Evan Pugh Professor of Biology and Entomology; Eberly Professor of Biotechnology