UMONS
" The UMONS Health Research Institute, on the initiative of Justine Gaugue, Laurence Ris and Mandy Rossignol, in collaboration with the MUMONS, have set up a user-friendly and pleasant website (www.home-stress-home.com) for children and young people, containing information, resources and a link to an online survey to assess anxiety levels. The data will be collected for research purposes to better understand the development of anxiety disorders in often neglected populations: the children and the young adults in school or early working life. This interface, based on the results of the survey, will make it possible to provide personalized feedback to the user, in order to direct him/her towards relaxation strategies or specialists if the level of anxiety measured is very high. Other surveys and tools will be added later on to allow longitudinal monitoring of the impact on mental and physical health of the stress generated by the current crisis. The objective is to develop this...

Read more: Justine Gaugue, Professor, Laurence Ris, Professor - Mandy Rossignol, Professor

ULB
" Inhaled ivermectin against COVID-19 study. Development of solution for nebulisation - preclinical safety and efficacy in animal models and clinical evaluation. CORONAVIRUS 2020 (CUR) research project submitted to FNRS on May 1, 2020. "
Funding: FNRS (requested)
Contact: Professor Karim Amighi Laboratory of Pharmaceutics and biopharmaceutics Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) Faculty of Pharmacy Campus Plaine, CP-207 Boulevard du Triomphe, B-1050 Brussels - Belgium This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

ULiège
" Since SARS-CoV-2 testing began at the CHU of Liège we have been carrying out regular whole genome sequencing (WGS) of COVID-19 samples. At the time of writing we have uploaded 187 viral genomes to https://nextstrain.org/ (almost half of the 393 from Belgium). We have carried out regular WGS to monitor the evolution of viral haplotypes. Where possible we have concentrated on health care workers with the goal of identifying clusters of transmission. This included a cluster of seven individuals who were tested on the Roche cobas® instrument using the SARS-CoV-2 test, all were positive for the ORF1ab assay, but negative for the second E-gene assay. To date we have WGS data from four of these individuals, all share identical viral genomes and a SNP in the E-gene has been identified as the most probable cause of the test failure. This observation highlights the importance of redundancy in SARS-CoV-2 assays, especially as some testing regimes recommend an E-gene assay as a primary...

Read more: Keith Durkin, Dr - Maria Artesi, Dr - Sébastien Bontems, Dr - Marie-Pierre Hayette, Dr- Vincent...

UCLouvain
" I have been asked by the IATDMCT to pilot a review sumarizing the potential interactions that it could have between investigational COVID antivirals and immunosuppressants (used to avoid rejection in solid organ transplantation) "
Publication References: PubMed ID=32304488 Pharmacologic treatment of transplant recipients infected with SARS-CoV-2: considerations regarding therapeutic drug monitoring and drug-drug interactions. Ther Drug Monit. 2020 Apr 15. doi: 10.1097/FTD.0000000000000761. [Epub ahead of print]
Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

ULiège, GIGA-Research
" Development of specific antigens to allow the detection of circulating antibodies against SARS-CoV-2. Our aim is to contribute to the development of serological tests that could help identifying the people previously infected by SARS-CoV-2 and detect the presence of neutralizing antibodies, which would predict an individual protection against COVID-19. With the help of local renowned companies, we are currently testing various antigens and optimizing their production. "
Contact: Dr. Laurence Delacroix (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), Neurodevelopmental Biology, GIGA-Neurosciences and GIGA-Stem Cells, 15 avenue Hippocrate, CHU-B36, B-4000 Liège). Dr. Marielle Lebrun (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) and Pr. Catherine Sadzot (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), laboratory of Immunology and Virology, GIGA-I3, 11 Avenue de l'hôpital, 4000 Liège.

ULiège
" The first objectives of our approach was to strongly increase the testing capacity for virus by using protocols that are as effective as possible and above all not very dependent on the external sources of consumables and reagents whose supply is threatened. The ULiege testing platform can analyse more than 3000 samples per day and is member on the National testing platform. "
Contact: Prof Fabrice BUREAU Vice-Recteur à la Recherche, Université de Liège Place du 20-Août, 7 B-4000, Liège Belgique Tél: +32 4 366 32 14 Prof Laurent GILLET Université de Liège Quartier Vallée, 2 Avenue de Cureghem, 10 B-4000, Liège Belgique Tél: +32 4 366 42 86

UCLouvain, Datatext
“The project aims at measuring the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on the French-speaking Belgium population through the analysis of discourses on social media. In particular, we work on an open corpus of (today) 4.000 tweets from politicians, 30.000 from the media and 100.000 from the population. All messages include a Covid-19 related expression. We focus on three main research topics: (1) the diachronic evolution of discourses, from the emergence of the disease in China to reopening plans, through lockdown measures; (2) the impact of political discourse on the acceptance of measures by citizens and (3) the role of the language used by the media in measures’ acceptance and anxiety of the population.”
Funding: Seeking funding 
Contact: Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  Website: https://uclouvain.be/instituts-recherche/ilc/miil/reseaux-sociaux.html 

ULiège - FNRS - Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium
" Massive infiltration of activated macrophages is associated with the development of a cytokine storm that leads to severe acute respiratory syndrome induced by SARS-CoV-2. Based on our results demonstrating the key role exerted by epigenetic regulation in the activity of macrophages, we propose to study the methyltransferase EZH2 in the pathogenesis induced by SARS-CoV-2. We have also shown that the PD-1 immune checkpoint is responsible for the macrophage anergy induced by the absence of EZH2. The goal of the project is to temper the excessive inflammatory responses associated with macrophages by interfering on the EZH2-PD-1 axis. "
Funding: Decision pending (FNRS Crédit Urgent de Recherche 40002642)
Publication References: - Inhibition of EZH2 methyltransferase decreases immunoediting of mesothelioma cells by autologous macrophages through a PD-1-dependent mechanism. Malik Hamaidia, Hélène Gazon, Clotilde Hoyos, Gabriela...

Read more: Luc Willems, FNRS Research Director

ULB and CHU-Charleroi
" MAker Study for COVID-19 Patient follow-up in intensive Care Unit (MASC-19) Around 5-10 % of patients suffering from COVID-19 symptom aggravation require intensive care. Among them half will die. COVID-19 is often compared to sepsis however few are known about this pathology and physicians are unable to discriminate which patients will suffer from severe symptoms. For this reason, Mask-19 project, which gathers CHU-Charleroi, the Faculties of Medicine and Pharmacy (ULB) and CNRS (France), will investigate markers in sera of COVID-19 patients collected in March and April 2020. They will be compared to septic patients by metabolomics and molecular networks for a better follow up of this specific patients "
Funding: COVID-ULB
Contact: Prof. Dr Pierre Van Antwerpen Dean of the Faculty of Pharmacy RD3- Pharmacognosy, Bioanalysis, Drug Discovery and Analytical Platform of the Faculty of Pharmacy This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. +3226505263 +3226505249...

Read more: M. Piagnerelli, Professor, CHU-Charleroi-ULB - K. Zouaoui Boudjeltia, Professor, CHU-Charleroi-ULB...

ULB
" CliPeDia is a website that makes science and mathematics lessons available free of charge to secondary school students. The project is led by Marc Haelterman, professor at the Brussels Polytechnic (ULB) as part of research in techno-pedagogy. Upon the announcement of the confinement, a communication campaign (Facebook and radio and TV press) was launched to invite students and their teachers to use CliPeDia as a course medium in the implementation of their distance courses. The result of this campaign has been remarkable in that, since the beginning of the containment measures, CliPeDia's audience has doubled. In just a few days, it actually went from 5,000 to more than 10,000 views per day. In the difficult learning conditions imposed by confinement, CliPeDia thus appears as a useful teaching tool for high school students and their teachers. "
Contact: Prof. Marc Haelterman Ecole polytechnique de Bruxelles, ULB Service OPERA-Photonique, CP 194/5 tél. 02 650 28 21 e-mail...

Read more: Marc Haelterman, Professor

UCLouvain, UNamur
" The measures that governments have taken in response to the current COVID-19 outbreak differ substantially across countries. On the initiative of the Erasmus University Rotterdam, researchers of twelve universities worldwide have been working together to study the response to these measures. Data has been collected of the self-reported behaviour and perception of students related to the COVID-19 measures. How important do they think the Covid-19 measures are, how serious do they take the measures, and to which degree do they follow or violate them? Furthermore, the relationship with perceived risk of COVID-19 and several personality traits will be studied. The success of the approach of governments is entirely dependent on the compliance of the population with the prescribed measures. Therefore, gaining insight in the determinants of compliance is important. The study will improve our understanding of behaviour in times of crisis and advance the development of...

Read more: Marcus Dejardin, Professor - Frank Janssen, Professor

Erasme Hopital
" Nutritional assessment and support for optimal rehabilitation following COVID 19 critical illness "
Funding: NA
Contact: NA

ULB - FNRS
" Computational analysis of the impact of SARS-CoV-2 on the renin-angiotensin system. "
Funding: FNRS
Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

ULB (centre ACTE) et Fondation SUSA Mons
Confinement lié au Covid-19 : le vécu de la famille et de l'enfant avec autisme." For almost two months, Belgian families have been confined at home because of the Covid-19 pandemic. This lockdown dramatically changed the daily life of families, especially those living with an autistic child, because social life and relationships are at the very heart of the autistic functioning. In some cases, changing daily habits and routines, closing of schools, stopping interventions and outdoor activities led to an increase of behavioral disorders and significantly impaired the quality of life of autistic people and their family. But, on the other hand, some families report an improvement of their child’s behavior, potentially due to a decrease of usual social demands. In order to understand how families with an autistic child dealt during this lockdown period, we conducted an on-line survey. To date, more than 250 French-speaking Belgian families...

Read more: Marielle WEYLAND, Speech Therapist, PhD Student.

ULiège + Mesylab SRL
" How to securely return to normalcy at work? All countries consider to lift the lockdown, but few have executed it. There are no "best practices". Questions abound: What are the risks? What are the most effective measures? Will communities follow? What are the consequences for our individual lives? Who decides how to proceed? AIMS OF THE PROJECT GIGA aims at defining the best possible approach to opening up again by involving its members. Your opinion matters. GIGA has sought assistance in conducting this real time experiment from political scientists, philosophers, lawyers and medical doctors. "
Contact: This project is supported by the GIGA office and is coordinated by the ad hoc Advisory Committee made up of expert political scientists in participation (Dr. F. Thoreau, Dr. C. Parotte, Dr. P. Delvenne, Dr. C. Fallon), a political and ethicist philosopher (Dr. F. Caeymaex) and doctors (Dr. Y. Beguin, Dr. G. Darcis).