20 MARCH 2020 • VOL 367 ISSUE 6484 1289PHOTO: AP PHOTO/MARK LENNIHAN
B
acterial colonies slid into freez-
ers for an indefinite rest. Clinical
trial participants told to stay home.
Populations of lab mice reduced to
the bare minimum. With a surge in
cases of coronavirus disease 2019
(COVID-19), research has been upended
around the world as access to labs is re-
stricted and travel curtailed to slow the
virus’ spread.
Many scientists emphasized that disrup-
tions to their work can’t compare with the
human toll of the pandemic. But the costs
to research will be substantial as projects
grind to a halt. Institutions facing local out-
breaks have made tough decisions about
which research to prioritize, often favoring
projects addressing the new coronavirus
while cutting back others. Many labs have
been forced to designate a couple of essen-
tial personnel to maintain equipment, cells,
and animals, while sending everyone else
home. Some are searching for workarounds
to keep things ticking, while others resign
themselves to losing data and materials.
Cancer geneticist Alberto Bardelli had
just 48 hours to close his lab at the Uni-
versity of Turin, after receiving a 7 March
email from the institution’s scientific direc-
tor and director general. When he told theSCIENCE25 lab members about the closure, some
cried. “The lab becomes a second family,”
he says. The researchers rushed to freeze
patient samples, but they don’t know
whether these will be usable once thawed.
At Harvard University, where a 6- to
8-week period of “suspended lab access” be-
gan this week, evolutionary biologist Hopi
Hoekstra and her team scrambled to plan
for their mouse colonies in case the ani-
mal care team becomes short-staffed dur-
ing the outbreak. She thinks she may have
to reduce her mouse population by half—
hundreds of animals—which could require
killing mice. At risk are strains collected
in the wild that exhibit unique behaviors,
she says. “If something happens, or they’re
not getting long-term care and we reduce
the colony so much that we can’t keep them
going, [those unique mice are] lost forever.”
At the world’s biggest atom smasher, the
Large Hadron Collider, engineers struggled
to complete scheduled upgrades to the col-
lider and the four giant particle detectors
it feeds. Only a skeleton crew remained
onsite near Geneva to implement work di-
rected by thousands of far-flung research-
ers. “I’ve spent probably 3 hours over the
past 24 on Skype with somebody, guiding
him through the installation of one bit of
our electronics,” says John Hobbs, a par-
ticle physicist at Stony Brook University
who works on a detector known as ATLAS.Shutdown policies remain murky at U.S.
national labs run by the Department of En-
ergy (DOE), which offer x-ray sources and
other facilities to more than 30,000 visit-
ing researchers each year. Some, includ-
ing Brookhaven National Laboratory and
Argonne National Laboratory, have closed
their doors to outside scientists. But op-
erations that could help combat the virus
will likely continue. On 12 March, neuro-
scientist Chris Fall, director of DOE’s basic
research arm, the Office of Science, wrote
to DOE-sponsored researchers urging
them to suggest ways they might join the
fight. DOE’s five particle accelerator–based
x-ray sources may help decipher the struc-
tures of proteins associated with the virus.
And the Office of Science’s three super-
computers could help sort through masses
of data on existing drugs to see which mol-
ecules might bind to the new virus and
knock it out of action.
Meanwhile, academic medical centers
are considering which of their thousands of
clinical trials to maintain. “We felt that with
COVID-19, the risk-benefit had shifted,”
says Deborah Stiles, vice president for re-
search operations and policy at Columbia
University. Beyond the risks and benefits
of an experimental drug or intervention,
managers must now throw in the danger of
contracting and spreading the virus during
inperson visits. Columbia has paused stud-
ies involving human subjects where partici-
pants didn’t stand to benefit directly. The
move allows most trials of therapeutics to
continue, although investigators are dis-
couraged from enrolling new participants.
Johns Hopkins University has sorted
clinical research into three tiers, reflecting
different risk-benefit trade-offs. Studies of
potential COVID-19 treatments, such as
Gilead’s antiviral remdesivir, or those ad-
dressing acute, life-threatening conditions,
are considered essential. Representing
about 10% to 15% of Hopkins’s 1500 clini-
cal trials, this tier can continue normally,
including enrolling new patients.
Studies in the second tier, including
many cancer trials, have halted new en-
rollment, but can continue as long as they
limit face-to-face contact—by mailing
drugs, for example. The third tier includes
cohort studies that follow volunteers long
term. These can proceed only online or by
telephone, says Daniel Ford, the universi-
ty’s vice dean for clinical investigation.
Protecting patients and staff from the
virus might mean straying from a trial’s
planned protocol, acknowledges Jonathan
Epstein, executive vice dean and chief sci-RESEARCH COMMUNITYColumbia University, like many other institutions
facing local outbreaks, has ramped down research.Coronavirus disruptions
reverberate through research
Scientists grapple with halted projects and locked-down labs
By Kelly Servick, Adrian Cho,
Jennifer Couzin-Frankel, and Giorgia Guglielmi