Updated May 5, 2020
The Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences has launched the local program of the National COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma Project. Researchers put out the call for people who have recovered from COVID-19. Experts believe if plasma from these survivors is administered to a currently infected person, these antibodies could help aid in recovery. “Those antibodies can hopefully control the virus, and those are in the plasma, so before we had antibiotics these things were tried and succeeded in certain situations,” says Sanjay Sethi, MD, professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine. Sethi is coordinating the program with Timothy F. Murphy, MD, SUNY Distinguished Professor of medicine and director of UB’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute.