COVID Study

If you are interested in participating, please read the following set of questions.   

1) You between the ages of 18-65.

2) You are not pregnant. 

3) You have either had a positive SARS-CoV-2 PCR test, serology test or you received a vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 as a volunteer in a clinical trial.  

4) You would self attest that you are healthy.

If all of the above statements are "true" for you, please send us an email! Thank you for your willingness to participate in this important study.  We will be in touch with you shortly!

Background and Study Goals

The disease COVID19 that is caused by the virus SARS-CoV-2 that has emerged as a global threat to humanity is predominantly transmitted from person to person by tiny droplets expelled in a sneeze or cough, as examples. Some persons who test positive for COVID19 do not show any symptoms of the disease, whereas others develop severe disease that requires hospitalization and even use of a ventilator to aide in breathing. The goal of our study is to understand the antibodies (produced by immune effector cells) that are present in the saliva of COVID19 patients who exhibit an array of symptoms as well as those who have received a vaccination against SARS-CoV-2, so that we can better understand the neutralizing antibody that is produced as a consequence of infection or vaccination. Also, we aim to understand if the neutralizing antibody produced as a result of primary infection or vaccination is sufficient to prevent reinfection and virus transmission of SARS-CoV-2 upon secondary exposure to the virus.

Bottom Line: As a team, we are operating under the base assumption that everyone has been making way too many assumptions about antibodies. Specifically, which antibody types are most important and where we should be looking for them. When people have focused in on just a couple types of antibodies, they’re missing a lot of the nuance of the immune response. We want to change that and we are going to look at the antibodies from your saliva samples with high resolution tools, and compare these secreted antibodies to the antibodies that circulate in the blood.