LITTLE ROCK – Early results from a University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS)-led COVID-19 antibody study show that 3.5% of Arkansans have been infected with the novel coronavirus through August.

UAMS researcher Joshua Kennedy, M.D., revealed the initial findings of the Arkansas Coronavirus Antibodies Seroprevalence Survey during a presentation Oct. 21 with Laura James, M.D., director of the UAMS Translational Research Institute.

The Arkansas Research Alliance (ARA)-sponsored talk focusing on UAMS’ COVID-19 research efforts featured James, an ARA fellow, Kennedy and John Arthur, M.D., Ph.D., also a UAMS COVID-19 researcher. UAMS has eight other studies testing new therapies for COVID-19 either active or in startup.

Kennedy, associate professor in the College of Medicine Department of Pediatrics, along with Craig Forrest, Ph.D., and Karl Boehme, Ph.D., associate professors in the College of Medicine Department of Microbiology and Immunology, have spearheaded an effort to analyze blood samples from Arkansans.

One aspect of the study involved using remnant blood samples from patients who visit UAMS clinics, including three Regional Campus clinics, and have their blood drawn for health reasons other than COVID-19. The samples, which would be discarded otherwise, are being collected and shipped to UAMS from across the state for the antibody test, which was developed in the laboratories of Boehme and Forrest.

Of 1,220 adult blood samples tested so far, 43 were positive, or 3.5%. From this analysis, samples were collected in July and August, 2020. While low overall, Kennedy said, there are noteworthy differences across populations.

“These early results show the importance of our efforts to survey statewide,” said James, associate vice chancellor for Clinical and

Translational Research at UAMS. “We will continue to evaluate antibody rates over the next several months to monitor the impact of COVID-19 in Arkansas.”

Seroprevalence is the proportion of people in a population whose blood serum tests positive for a particular disease. Unlike diagnostic tests for COVID-19, the seroprevalence antibody testing looks back into the immune system’s history. A positive antibody test means the person was exposed to the virus and developed antibodies against the virus.

It will give state leaders a good estimate of how many Arkansans have been infected with the virus since it first came to the state, even if they did not become ill or have symptoms.

Kennedy praised the collaboration of UAMS Regional Campuses, whose family medical centers in Fayetteville, Fort Smith and Pine Bluff are all contributing remnant blood samples. The collaboration was also made possible by the new UAMS Rural Research Network and the Translational Research Institute, whose resources are helping make use of Regional Campuses’ infrastructure to include rural areas of Arkansas in health research.

The study began this summer after UAMS researchers developed high-accuracy antibody testing methods. As part of the research program, UAMS is collecting blood samples from nearly 7,500 Arkansas adults and children. Arkansas Children’s is leading the pediatric component of the study. The UAMS College of Public Health is leading the epidemiology component of the study, using the contact tracing call center to enroll study participants and collect health histories and blood samples from individuals who represent the entire state.

The study is supported by $3.3 million in federal coronavirus aid that was then allocated by the Arkansas Coronavirus Aid, Relief and

Economic Security Act Steering Committee created by Gov. Asa Hutchinson.

The Translational Research Institute is supported by grant TL1 TR003109 through the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

A UAMS-community partnership has garnered two grants for community and backyard gardens and energy efficiency projects.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture awarded a one-year $100,000 grant for developing a network of gardens to improve access to local foods for low-income communities of color in central Arkansas. The grant will also fund education programs and initiatives to promote urban agriculture, and will be evaluated by the UAMS Office of Community-Based Public Health.

Another $10,000 was awarded by Climate Reality to increase sustainability through backyard gardens and energy efficiency.

The grants resulted from a partnership that involves the College of Public Health Office of Community-Based Public Health, the Translational Research Institute Community Engagement Program, and community partner Arkansas Interfaith Power and Light. Other partners include the University of Arkansas Business Innovations Clinic and Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality Farm to School Program.

TRI Community Engagement Program Manager Rachel Hale worked with Arkansas Interfaith Power and Light’s Jimmy Parks, Dr.P.H., garden manager and Scharmel Roussel, executive director, to develop plans and apply for project funding.

The funding, which will provide volunteer and part-time internship opportunities for UAMS students , was applauded by Kate Stewart, M.D., director of the Office of Community-Based Public Health in the College of Public Health, and director of the Translational Research Institute’s Community Engagement Program.

“These exciting projects will engage our students as volunteers in their community gardens,” Stewart said. “It will also help them evaluate projects they are doing with community members to increase the use of backyard gardens.”

Projects will be focused in low-income central Arkansas communities of color living with limited access to affordable and nutritious food, especially the elderly, children, and veterans with high rates of food insecurity, high rates of chronic illness, and disproportionately high utility bills.

Activities to improve food security and help communities adapt to a changing climate will include:

• Supporting community members in starting and maintaining backyard gardens and increasing access to energy efficient items and information.
• Providing education about plant-rich diets, importance of local food, climate change and health, and energy conservation.
• Supporting existing community gardens to provide excess food to the UAMS 12th Street Health and Wellness Center and other food pantries.
• Mentoring youth and young adults interested in becoming urban farmers.

This month’s TRIbune newsletter features the new Rural Research Network, an intra-institutional partnership that leverages the infrastructure of UAMS Regional Programs and its regional campuses.

The network will help TRI meet its mission of helping UAMS more effectively address chronic health conditions among rural populations.

Read The TRIbune

In this new video, UAMS researcher Jessica Snowden, M.D., chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Disease in the College of Medicine Department of Pediatrics, explains why she was thrilled to consult a group of teenagers about her study recruitment materials.

Snowden, who needed feedback from those in her target audience, was the recipient of a free service provided by TRI’s Community Engagement Program. TRI offers all UAMS-affiliated researchers a one-time, two-hour Community Review Board (CRB) made up of participants whose life experiences are relevant to the study.

To assist Snowden, the Community Engagement team recruited Little Rock high school students who had recently graduated from TRI’s Community Scientist Academy.  

She said the CRB “was insanely helpful” in more effectively recruiting asthmatic children for a multi-site vitamin D study.

Snowden is also co-principal investigator of the NIH-funded IDeA (Institutional Development Awards Program) States Pediatric Clinical Trials Network Data Coordinating and Operations Center. The program directs clinical operations for trial implementation and professional development across a 17-state NIH-funded research group.

Watch the video to learn more about this service.

TRI has issued the call for Letters of Intent and Request for Proposals for its Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) Scholars Program.

The Scholars Program, which begins January 2021, was established to increase community-partnered research at UAMS to better serve the research needs of the Arkansas community and ultimately to reduce health disparities.

This program is led by TRI’s Community Engagement Program and will provide participants with the foundational knowledge of CBPR and skills to:

• Develop meaningful, equitable partnerships (academic researcher and community partner)
• Learn together how to conduct community-based participatory research
• Jointly develop and submit a scientifically sound funding proposal for targeted pilot funding of up to $50,000 from TRI. (Participation in this course does not guarantee an award)

Find additional information here.

Apply here.

Deadlines: 

• Letters of Intent (encouraged but not required): Aug. 15, 2020
• Grant Proposal: Oct. 1, 2020

For any questions, contact: Rachel Hale rbhale@uams.edu

TRI is excited to release its 2020 Annual Report, a celebration of the work we are supporting at UAMS and with our partner institutions.

Since 2009, translational research has become embedded in our culture at UAMS, and last year’s Clinical and Translational Science Award has created exciting new opportunities to further advance our goals.

This engagingly crafted Annual Report highlights the innovation derived from our programs and support and that reach communities across Arkansas.

View it here. 

LITTLE ROCK — The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) has developed and begun using high-accuracy antibody testing to determine the magnitude of COVID-19 infection in Arkansas and inform the decisions of policymakers.

As part of the research program, UAMS will collect blood samples from nearly 7,500 Arkansas adults and children through October. By early August, a robotic-assisted immunoassay machine will enable processing of 2,500 samples per day for workplace, school and other community settings. UAMS researchers are now processing only up to 180 samples per day by hand.

The effort is supported by $3.3 million in federal coronavirus aid that was then allocated by the Arkansas Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act Steering Committee created by Gov. Asa Hutchinson.

Unlike diagnostic tests, COVID-19 antibody testing looks back into the immune system’s history. A positive antibody test  means the person was exposed to the virus and developed antibodies against the virus. It will give state leaders a good idea how many Arkansans have been infected with the virus since it first came to the state, even if they did not become ill or have symptoms.

“It will be critical for policymakers to estimate how many Arkansans have been previously infected as they consider reopening schools, allowing mass gatherings, and keeping workplaces safe,” said UAMS Chancellor Cam Patterson, M.D., MBA.

“As much as we may want to, we know we can’t test everyone with the antibody test right now, but we can design a program that will give us an estimate of how many Arkansans have

had COVID-19,” said Laura James, M.D., director of the UAMS Translational Research Institute.

Seroprevalence is the proportion of people in a population whose blood serum tests positive for a particular disease. There are two study components: a laboratory component and a statewide epidemiology component.

The lab component was initiated in early March by Josh Kennedy, M.D., associate professor, College of Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, along with Karl Boehme, Ph.D., and Craig Forrest, Ph.D., both associate professors in the College of Medicine, Department of Microbiology and Immunology.

Boehme and Forrest developed and validated the high-accuracy antibody test using components provided by Florian Krammer, Ph.D., a microbiology colleague at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, and blood samples that Kennedy acquired.

“This vital research would not have been possible without their collaboration and original laboratory science,” said James, also associate vice chancellor for Clinical and Translational Research.

The researchers’ achievement inspired leaders across UAMS and Arkansas Children’s Hospital to come together in support of the statewide project.

The epidemiology component of the study, led by the UAMS College of Public Health, will utilize the contact tracing call center to enroll study participants and college health histories and blood samples from individuals who represent the entire state. It will provide the first results about the prevalence of asymptomatic Arkansans.

The epidemiology component is being led by College of Public Health Dean Mark Williams, Ph.D., and Benjamin Amick, Ph.D., associate dean for research. Key College of Public Health team members are epidemiologists Wendy Nembhard, Ph.D., Victor Cardenas, M.D., Ph.D., and Lori Fischbach, Ph.D., and biostatistician James Selig, Ph.D.

“Providing accurate estimates is vitally important in helping policymakers plan for implementing protective and treatment measures in Arkansas,” Williams said. “Without this information, public health officials are just guessing, and there is a chance they will guess wrong.”

Significant UAMS guidance and resources have also come from Shuk-Mei Ho, Ph.D., vice chancellor for Research and Innovation, and Stephanie Gardner, Ed.D., Pharm.D., provost, chief academic officer and chief strategy officer.

Other collaborators and support have come from the Translational Research Institute’s Clinical and Translational Science Award from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, including its informatics core, led by Fred Prior, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics in the College of Medicine. Other collaborators from the College of Medicine include Erika Olgaard, M.D., assistant professor, Department of Pathology, and Jeff Moran, Ph.D., assistant professor, Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, who will oversee the robotic component of the study; and Jessica Snowden, M.D., associate professor, Department of Pediatrics, will oversee the pediatric component.

“This is truly a team science effort involving the expertise of diverse but complimentary experts who have come together to develop a solution to address COVID-19 in Arkansas,” James said.

“This is a great opportunity for us as basic scientists to be able to apply our skillset to a question that has huge public health ramifications potentially worldwide and definitely for the state of Arkansas,” Forrest said. “Many tests on the market have proven to be inaccurate or provide no useful information beyond a positive or negative result. We’re confident we have a test that’s reliable and meaningful and will serve Arkansas well.”

The UAMS antibody test requires a small amount of blood, although more than a pin prick. Its validity testing shows it is not fooled by antibodies for other coronaviruses.

Boehme said the antibody testing will serve as a springboard for researchers to answer deeper questions about COVID-19 in other studies, such as:

• How many antibodies are present when tested?
• How robust is the immune response?
• How much antibody is required to provide immunity?
• How long does immunity last?

“For other coronaviruses, the antibody response may wane after a year or two,” Boehme said. “The duration of immunity has implications for a vaccine; will the vaccine be effective for life or will it be a yearly vaccine like with the flu?”

The UAMS Translational Research Institute (TRI) today announced four recipients of its biomedical informatics-focused pilot

grants.

The recipients are required to use translational biomedical informatics approaches to health care issues that particularly affect rural individuals and/or that directly examine or impact rural health. They will receive up to $50,000 for their one-year projects and are expected to develop findings that lead to larger programs of research with national funding.

The awardees, all from the College of Medicine, are:

Hari Eswaran, Ph.D.; Professor, Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology; Identification of Pregnant Women at High Risk of Maternal Morbidity

Hari Eswaran, Ph.D. - Identification of Pregnant Women at High Risk of Maternal Morbidity

Se-Ran Jun, Ph.D.; Assistant Professor, Department of Biomedical Informatics; Using Genomics to Track Carbapenem-Resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) Linking Rural and Urban Health in Arkansas

Se-Ran Jun, Ph.D.

Sacha McBain, Ph.D.; Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry; Digital PTSD Screening and Intervention to Meet Rural Needs

Sacha McBain, Ph.D.

Tuhin Virmani, M.D., Ph.D.; Associate Professor, Department of Neurology; Utilization of a Neuroinformatics Research Platform (ARIES) to Develop Quantitative Tools for Clinical Assessment and Treatment of Parkinson’s Disease Patients in Rural Arkansas

Tuhin Virmani, M.D.,Ph.D.

Recipients of the Translational Biomedical Informatics Awards were selected by a study section of UAMS and external faculty reviewers, as well as community reviewers.

TRI is supported by a Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health, grant UL1 TR003107.

Clinical Trials Day is Wednesday, May 20, and TRI, along with others in UAMS’ research community, are celebrating all week. Why? Because with COVID-19, clinical research has never been more important. There are now more than 30 COVID-19 research studies at UAMS and Arkansas Children’s Research Institute.

TRI has posted three short videos of UAMS research participants with inspirational stories on its social media channels.

View this brief video by TRI Associate Director John Arthur, M.D., Ph.D.

All of these videos are TRI’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/uamstri/, and Twitter page: @TRI_UAMS.

Please visit and share!