12th April 2021

COVID-19 test kits

It seems that after an initial frenzy at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, when seemingly almost any old test could somehow make it on the market (check out the April news review for comments on quality issues), […]

STEM 12 min read
20th February 2021

Spiffin’ coronavirus vaccine

The purpose of a vaccine is effectively to train the immune system in recognising and combatting the virus quickly should there ever be a real infection. To do so, vaccines deliver virus components, which are harmless on […]

STEM 6 min read
3rd January 2021

Welcome to Bio-Babel

Working across disciplines can be confusing, not only due to professional jargon but also due to basic terminology being used interchangeably by different people or media sources. This is very true in the biomedical sphere. After a […]

STEM 5 min read
11th October 2020

Quo vadis?

COVID-19 has had a huge impact on various industries including manufacturing, travel & tourism as well as life sciences and healthcare. When we talk about ‘industries’, inevitably we talk about human lives. Let’s look beyond the immediate […]

Life 4 min read
11th September 2020

Plasma vs virus

Convalescent plasma (CP) therapy gained FDA emergency use authorisation (EUA) in August. It appears that this is surrounded by some controversy and suspicion of politicisation. Without getting anywhere near politics here, let’s not forget that health agencies’ […]

STEM 3 min read
11th July 2020

It’s not an immunity passport

I have had discussions lately about the perception that an immunity passport is the same as a vaccination passport. This is not so. The choice of words matters! Let’s explore this from a basic immunological perspective.

STEM 5 min read
17th June 2020

Convalescent plasma chained

Last month I wrote about being a mentor for one of the teams at the Stop COVID-19 hackathon by ConsenSys Health. My team was called dPlasma and amazingly won the first prize in the competition! ? Let’s […]

STEM 6 min read

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