MJH Life Sciences COVID-19 Coalition to hold innovative testing strategies webinar

The experts at the MJH Life Sciences COVID-19 Coalition will turn their attention to the question of coronavirus testing in a new free webinar.

At 6 p.m. ET on Dec. 1, the coalition will discuss the questions of diagnostic vs. antibody tests, at-home vs. point-of-care, sensitivity vs. specificity, and all other facets of testing past or current COVID-19 infection.

Sign up for the free webinar, “Innovative Testing Strategies for COVID-19,” here.

The coalition sprang from MJH’s mission to improve quality of life through healthcare communications, education, and research, the MJH Life Sciences COVID-19 Coalition was formed to help keep healthcare professionals up-to-date and informed on the science and latest learnings on COVID-19.Leveraging relationships with top thought leaders across a variety of key specialties, the Coalition generates the most accurate, up-to-the-minute information on the pandemic’s ever-evolving impact on healthcare professionals and the patients they treat. For more information on the MJH Life Sciences™ COVID-19 Coalition, visit mjhlifesciences.com/covid19-coalition.
The speakers at this webinar will be:

• Moderator and coalition member – Paul E. Sax, MD: Sax is clinical director of the Division of Infectious Diseases and the HIV Program at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Sax received his MD from Harvard Medical School, did his residency in Internal Medicine at BWH, then fellowship in Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is Editor-in-Chief of Open Forum Infectious Diseases, is Section Editor of HIV/AIDS in UpToDate, on the Editorial Board of NEJM Journal Watch Infectious Diseases (where he writes the HIV and ID Observations blog), and on the editorial advisory board of Medscape HIV/AIDS.
• Panelist – Michael Mina, MD, PhD: Mina is a physician-scientist and assistant professor in the department of Epidemiology and Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard School of Public Health. He is also a pathologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School where he helps to oversee molecular virology. He is a recent recipient of the National Institutes of Health NIH Director’s Early Independence Award, and his public health efforts have been highlighted by The Economist Magazine where he was named one of eight Global Progress Makers. He has received numerous national and international recognitions for his research on childhood infectious diseases and vaccines.
• Panelist – Jonathan S. Gootenberg, PhD: Gootenberg draws from fundamental microbiology to engineer new molecular tools. These tools, including the popular genome editing system CRISPR, allow for unprecedented manipulation and profiling of cellular states in the body, and have multiple applications in basic science, diagnostics, and therapeutics. Dr. Gootenberg uses gene editing, gene delivery, and cellular profiling methods to understand the changes that occur in the brain and other organs during aging, with the goal of generating new therapies for degenerative disease.
• Panelist – Omar O. Abudayyeh, PhD: Abudayyeh is a McGovern Institute Fellow at MIT where he directs a lab exploring microbial diversity for developing next-generation cell profiling, gene editing and gene delivery technologies. These tools, including the popular gene editing system CRISPR, allow for unprecedented manipulation and profiling of cellular states with multiple applications in basic science and for programmable therapeutics and diagnostics.
• Panelist – Esther Babady, PhD, D(ABMM), FIDSA: Babady is the Director of the Clinical Microbiology Service, the Director of the CPEP Clinical Microbiology Fellowship program, an Attending Microbiologist and Member (Professor) in the Departments of Laboratory Medicine and Medicine at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York City. She received her PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and completed a post-doctoral CPEP fellowship in Clinical Microbiology both at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN before joining MSKCC.