A Bedside-to-Bench Approach to Pandemic Preparedness

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The clinical capabilities of the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) and its clinical partner, Nebraska Medicine (NM), played vital roles in the treatment of U.S. citizens infected with Ebola in 2014 and the early response to the COVID-19 pandemic. While the presence of the National Quarantine Unit (NQU) and the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit (NBU) on campus provided UNMC researchers with some of the earliest access to individuals exposed to infectious agents (in the NQU), as well as those who begin to develop disease (in the NBU), we recognized a key gap in our capabilities is the lack of modern technologies within our high- containment spaces required to gain greater insights into the pathogenic mechanisms utilized by new and emerging pathogens. Therefore, the overall goal of this proposed project is to modernize our high-containment research laboratories to maximize their research potential and to leverage our clinical expertise to foster research on vaccine and therapeutic development. This will be achieved in two ways: First, we will improve our biocontainment infrastructure within key biocontainment research facilities in a way that increases our capacity to conduct research on high-consequence pathogens, maximizes synergy between the various biocontainment laboratories, and increases biosecurity. Second, we will invest in the modern technologies needed in our BSL-3 and ABSL-3 laboratories to conduct cutting-edge studies on new and emerging pathogens and to address critical questions related to disease pathogenesis. Upon completion, these improvements will foster much greater synergy between the clinical and research arms of UNMC and NM, leveraging early access to clinical data/samples to streamline research into disease pathogenesis, and to accelerate the development of new vaccines and therapeutics during future pandemics.