Israel’s Sheba Medical Center, NIH Partner For COVID-19 Research

Israel’s Sheba Medical Center at Tel HaShomer and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the US’s biomedical and public health research agency, have joined forces to conduct applied scientific and clinical research in the hunt for treatments to end the global COVID-19 pandemic.

As part of the agreement, Sheba Medical Center will supply the NIH’s Vaccine Research Center with blood samples, plasma, and the COVID-19 virus from infected patients in Israel. They will also send all relevant information gathered from a series of clinical trials the hospital is conducting with various treatments from global pharmaceutical companies, as well as its own experimental treatments, the Ramat Gan-based hospital said in a statement on Thursday.

Sheba Medical Center will supply the NIH’s Vaccine Research Center with blood samples, plasma and the COVID-19 virus itself from infected patients in Israel, as well as all relevant information via a series of clinical trials the hospital is currently conducting on various treatments from global pharmaceutical companies, as well as its own experimental treatments.

The NIH will support Sheba research on COVID-19 in order to accelerate the process of researching, understanding, and finding the most effective treatments and vaccines.

“This collaboration brings together the outstanding clinical acumen of Sheba Medical Center with our state-of-the-art approaches to the scientific investigation of human infectious disease. I am certain that we will be able to contribute much to the resolution not only of this current pandemic but also of emerging infections in the future,” said Dr. Daniel Douek, senior investigator/human immunology section in the NIH Vaccine Research Center.