Engaging communities in therapeutics clinical research during pandemics: Experiences and lessons from the ACTIV COVID-19 therapeutics research initiative.

This manuscript addresses a critical topic: navigating complexities of conducting clinical trials during a pandemic. Central to this discussion is engaging communities to ensure diverse participation. The manuscript elucidates deliberate strategies employed to recruit minority communities with poor social drivers of health for participation in COVID-19 trials.

ACTIV trials: Lessons learned in trial design in the setting of an emergent pandemic.

Accelerating COVID-19 Treatment Interventions and Vaccines (ACTIV) was initiated by the US government to rapidly develop and test vaccines and therapeutics against COVID-19 in 2020. The ACTIV Therapeutics-Clinical Working Group selected ACTIV trial teams and clinical networks to expeditiously develop and launch master protocols based on therapeutic targets and patient populations. The suite of clinical trials was designed to collectively inform therapeutic care for COVID-19 outpatient, inpatient, and intensive care populations globally.

Annotation-free prediction of microbial dioxygen utilization.

Aerobes require dioxygen (O) to grow; anaerobes do not. However, nearly all microbes-aerobes, anaerobes, and facultative organisms alike-express enzymes whose substrates include O, if only for detoxification. This presents a challenge when trying to assess which organisms are aerobic from genomic data alone.