The Massachusetts Consortium on Pathogen Readiness (MassCPR) is led by Harvard Medical School (HMS) and unifies 17 institutions propelled by a common mission: to address both the immediate and long-term challenges of the COVID-19 crisis and to enhance preparedness for future pandemics.
Since its formation in March 2020, MassCPR has grown into an unprecedented collaboration bringing together hundreds of basic and translational scientists, clinicians, and public health professionals from a variety of disciplines, including virology, immunology, microbiology, epidemiology, pathology, diagnostics and therapeutic development, computational biology, and clinical medicine.
Since 2020, insights generated by MassCPR researchers have helped to:
- Catalyze vaccine development and deployment
- Deepen our mechanistic understanding of the interplay between the virus and its human host
- Generate critical knowledge about the immunobiology of SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19
- Map the basic structure and biology of SARS-CoV-2 and its behavior inside human and other animal cells
- Propel our understanding of how viral mutations can evade immune system defenses and antibody-based therapeutics
- Illuminate new understanding of T cell and antibody responses in SARS-CoV-2 infection
- Enhance our understanding COVID-19 in pregnancy, children, and immunocompromised individuals
- Identify drivers of health disparities in Covid-19 and map strategies for tackling them
- Inform the design and establishment of national clinical treatment guidelines for COVID-19
- Inform the design of new testing modalities
- Enable the design of novel computational models to understand, map, and track viral spread
To reflect the evolving nature of the pandemic, in late 2021 and early 2022 MassCPR added three new focus areas that will build upon, as well as collaborate with, other research efforts within the consortium and chart a path for the future of COVID-19 research.
- Viral Variants — dedicated to understanding SARS-CoV-2’s changing biology and behavior and to developing ways to monitor and forecast the emergence of new variants
- Post-Acute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 (PASC), or Long COVID — dedicated to understanding the risks, various dimensions, and pathogenesis of long COVID syndrome—knowledge can help lay the groundwork for both prevention strategies and treatments
- Biospecimens Collection, Tracking, Analysis, and Data Sharing — dedicated to enable and support research efforts across consortium participants
By bringing together over 800 collaborators across universities, medical schools, research institutes, teaching hospitals, government agencies, and biopharmaceutical companies, MassCPR has offered a blueprint for global cooperation and collaboration, demonstrating that when we break down barriers across scientific disciplines, modes of intellectual inquiry, disparate institutions, and geographic borders, we are capable of tackling even the greatest of challenges.
The consortium is led by HMS Dean George Q. Daley and David Golan, HMS dean for research operations and global programs, along with faculty co-leads Arlene Sharpe, chair of the Department of Immunology at HMS, and Bruce Walker, director of the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard.
Read our commentary, “Collaboration is the cure for COVID-19,” published in the Boston Globe.
