COVID-19 Research and Understanding Emerging Respiratory Viruses

While the urgency to understand COVID-19 and its clinical implications remain, our research efforts must also adapt to emerging threats to lung health. The new Emerging Respiratory Pathogen Award supports investigators to advance knowledge of COVID-19 and now has been expanded to include research on other, novel respiratory viruses with pandemic potential.

Announcing Our Awardees

Funded at $100,000 a year for two years, these awards are exploring important avenues to reduce the burden we have experienced due to the COVID-19 virus. A few examples include:

• Using advanced chemical analysis to determine if the Omicron variant contributes to the risk of developing Long COVID, and if the risk is still greater in women compared to men like in earlier variants. 
• Developing new genetic tools to determine who is at greatest risk of becoming critically ill from viral infections such as COVID-19, influenza, and other respiratory viruses. 

These areas focus on the long-term effects of COVID-19 and investigating genetic factors that contribute to severe respiratory illnesses, which are crucial in the context of the ongoing health crisis and for future pandemics.

The Lung Association continues to fund innovative research through our annual awards and grants program which includes studies on COVID-19 and other respiratory viruses such as Influenza and RSV. 

With 21 COVID-19 projects currently funded, here are a few highlights:

Learn more about these studies and view the full list of COVID-19 and Respiratory Virus Research Award recipients.  

COVID-19 Clinical Research

A cornerstone of the COVID-19 Action Initiative was to leverage our existing clinical research network and fund additional and novel respiratory virus research by immediately expanding COVID-19 research within the current studies of the Airways Clinical Research Centers (ACRC) Network.

The ACRC was among the clinical networks invited to join the NHLBI’s Collaborating Network of Networks for Evaluating COVID-19 and Therapeutic Strategies (CONNECTS) initiative, which aims to build on NHLBI’s existing clinical research networks across the nation to better understand the risk of severe illness from COVID-19 and to identify therapies that will slow the disease progression and help speed recovery.