In the video above, USF Health leaders and frontline workers look back on the successes, challenges and emotions they experienced while dealing with an incredibly challenging year amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Their stories include developing testing supplies now used around the world, creating programs aimed at treating vulnerable populations and helping rapidly develop and roll out vaccines against the disease, which Dr. Charles Lockwood, MD, Dean of the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine said “rivals the moon landing.”

USF Health College of Nursing vice dean Denise Maguire, PhD, administers a vaccine shot.

USF Health researchers have launched several clinical trials as part of the world-wide effort to reduce the severity and even prevent COVID-19.

In connection with Tampa General Hospital, the USF Health researchers are leading the examination of a range of medications and treatment protocols that could impact the disease at a symptoms-level for patients and at the cellular level of the virus.

“The USF Health Office of Clinical Research and supporting parties are making strides that we’ve never made before,” said Rachel Karlnoski PhD, CHRC, director of Clinical Research Operations for USF Health.

“The typical start-up timeframe for new clinical trials in an academic medical center is 90 days or more. Our goal for COVID-19 trials was five days or less and we have succeeded. Communication, collaboration and prioritization from our budget and contract analysts, onsite legal counsel, USF IRB, central IRBs, investigators, study teams and regulatory manager have enabled our success.”

The united, expedited efforts paid off and now USF Health and TGH are conducting multiple front-line studies that link to larger efforts across the country, all in sync for finding treatments and cures for COVID-19.

“I am humbled by the response from our MCOM research staff, and their willingness to volunteer and put themselves at risk,” Karlnoski said. “We have over 30 volunteers from all departments comprised of nurses, coordinators, regulatory specialists, and data analysts who are ready to be deployed when a COVID trial becomes available. The silver lining behind the pandemic is the visibility it has brought to the importance of clinical research in the advancement of medicine. I am optimistic that we will find an effective treatment.”

One of the main overarching research efforts is the inclusion of data related to COVID-19 as part of a national registry tracking many aspects of the virus and those infected with it, such as pregnant women and their babies. USF Health and TGH providers are actively submitting information to this registry.

Among the clinical trials being set up or currently underway are:

• Testing sarilumab to determine effectiveness in blocking inflammation in the lungs in hospitalized severely ill patients.
• Two studies, one in adults and the other in children, are looking at the emergency use of remdesivir, an antiviral drug that may help kill the virus. These studies are for critically ill COVID-19 patients.
• Several studies looking at hydroxychloroquine, on three main fronts:
  • For severely ill patients: Given to patients coming into the emergency department who are severely ill and are going to be hospitalized.
  • For health care workers: A multi-site clinical trial involving 15,000 health care workers across the country to determine if hydroxychloroquine can prevent COVID-19.
  • For outpatient use: Given to those who test positive for COVID-19 but are not severely ill and don’t need to be hospitalized.
• Using convalescent sera/plasma from people who have recovered from COVID-19 in those who currently have the disease to test the sera’s ability treat these COVID-19.
• Testing 3D printed nasal swabs to confirm their ability to prevent so many false negatives compared with standard swabs when used for testing for COVID-19.
• Testing in outpatient settings the use of inhaled nitric oxide to help treat patients with COVID-19 who require supplemental oxygen.
• Studying Ruxolitinib in critically ill patients with COVID-19 and the impact of the medication in easing or stopping the associated cytokine storm, when the patient’s immune system becomes overwhelmed and attacks healthy cells.
• Other studies are looking into ways for treating pneumonia associated with so many cases of patients with COVID-19; assessing the safety and anti-coronavirus response of combined suppression of host nucleotide synthesis in hospitalized adults with COVID-19; testing Brequinar, an antiviral drug for treating COVID-19.

For more information about these and other clinical research taking place at USF Health, please email the Office of Clinical Research at ocr@usf.edu

The four USF Health physicians who traveled the Bahamas to offer medical help to evacuees from Hurricane Dorian have returned, sharing details about their effort.

Seetha Lakshmi, MD, Andrew Myers, MD, Asa Oxner, MD, and Elimarys Perez-Colon, MD, — all on faculty in the Department of Internal Medicine in the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine – spent several days in Nassau.

Arriving in Nassau to help provide medical care are, from left, Dr. Seetha Lakshmi, Dr. Asa Oxner, Dr. Andrew Myers, and Dr. Elimarys Perez-Colon.

The team evaluated around 50 to 60 pediatric patients for school physicals and acute illnesses.  Patients were about 60 to 70% Haitian living in Abaco and now living in public shelters. Most common ailments were upper respiratory infections, dermatologic diagnoses, asthma, allergies, pneumonia, probable tuberculosis, which was referred to hospital for diagnosis and treatment, and grieving/emotional and psychological trauma.

The trip also included a delivery of 3,000 pounds of medical supplies and medications. This adds to the estimated 50,000 pounds of medical and para-medical humanitarian donations that this group of partners has been able to source and deliver to Rand Memorial Hospital on Grand Bahama over the past two weeks.

Help is still needed to continue the donation effort. Please visit: usf.to/Bahamas

Reactions from the USF Health team:

“We were really surprised by the amount of resiliency we saw because they were evacuee patients, but then they have smiles on their faces and plans for their future,” said Dr. Oxner. “We are also really impressed with how organized the (Bahamas) Ministry of Health is. We’ve participated in other responses in other countries and the Ministry of Health in the Bahamas was much more organized.”

“We offered a lot of help to children who were displaced and trying to get back to school,” said Dr. Lakshmi. “The parents who brought them in just teared up. Another child came in, a four-year-old girl, and she had a rash all over her body and I asked the parent how it started. She said they were in their house when the water started coming up and up. She grabbed her kids and ran up to the hilly area where there was an abandoned truck. She loaded her kids in and she saw the water rise up. They were in chest deep water for 12 hours.”

“In addition to donations, they are going to need more mental health and support,” said Dr. Perez-Colon. “The trauma we witnessed there is very significant. These kids are incredible. They’re resilient. Some were smiling but a lot of them we had a little bit of trouble getting close to them, and some had trouble having eye contact, having nightmares. So they do need more mental health help.”

Dr. Elimarys Perez-Colon with a young girl in Nassau.