Latest updates

Queen’s and McGill University have found that viruses, (small microbes that cause diseases such as the common cold or COVID-19) can ‘hijack’ an existing molecular process in the cell in order to block the block the body’s antiviral immune response.

Research by Queen’s and DATA-CAN has highlighted how hundreds of people are at risk of dying unnecessarily over the next five years, if there is no plan on how to diagnose and treat people with other life-threatening illnesses alongside the pandemic.

A programme of weekly testing of pupils and staff is to be introduced in special schools in Northern Ireland at the start of February. The testing will be delivered by the Queen's University Belfast laboratory using the Direct LAMP test platform.

Researchers at Queen’s University have completed recruitment of patients to a UK-wide clinical trial that is assessing the safety of an innovative cell therapy for COVID-19 patients with acute respiratory failure.

Queen’s University Belfast has been awarded a grant from Science Foundation Ireland and the Northern Ireland Department for the Economy to research how COVID-19 damages blood vessels.

Queen’s University Belfast is playing a key role in a £2m collaboration, to better exploit the power of policy and research to help mitigate the biggest social impacts of COVID-19 and accelerate the UK’s recovery from the pandemic.

1,000 children from Northern Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales, known as ‘COVID Warriors’ have had their levels of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies measured during the first wave of the pandemic and repeated again two months after initial recruitment.

Professor Mark Lawler, Professor of Digital Health at Queen’s University Belfast and Scientific Director for DATA-CAN, the UK’s Health Data Research Hub for Cancer, has today (Wednesday 18 November) launched a European-focused ‘7-Point Plan’.

A model that can calculate a person’s risk of becoming infected and then seriously ill due to COVID-19 has been shown to accurately estimate risk during the first wave of the pandemic in England.

Dr Olinda Santin from the School of Nursing and Midwifery and Dr Chris Jenkins from the Centre for Public Health have been awarded share of a £7.2 million grant from UKRI to support the world’s most disadvantaged people affected by the pandemic.

Dr David Courtney, from Wellcome-Wolfson Institute for Experimental Medicine is one of 436 laureates from the 2020 ERC Starting Grants competition who have been awarded a share of €677 million to tackle the biggest scientific questions of our time.

A research team from the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Queen’s University Belfast has been awarded a £263,701 grant to create an online advance care planning resource for nursing homes during a COVID-19 outbreak.

Researchers from Queen’s University Belfast are providing independent oversight and expert advice to the team developing the new StopCOVID NI app.

A research team from Queen’s has been awarded a £500,000 UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Rapid Response Fund grant to investigate the role of bacterial co-infections in COVID-19, and drug repurposing for the treatment of the disease.

Research led by the Institute for Cancer Research, and co-authored by Professor Mark Lawler, from Queen’s, on the effect of delays in the two-week-wait cancer referral pathway during the COVID-19 pandemic has been published in The Lancet Oncology.

A coalition of partners is today putting forward to Government a strategy to boost language learning across the UK’s four jurisdictions, which has fallen in recent years.

Nicola Ward, aged 22 from Cabra in County Down, will graduate today with a Master’s of Pharmacy degree (MPharm) with First Class Honours from the School of Pharmacy from Queen’s University.

COVID-19 has had a significant impact not just in terms of the immediate effects of the disease, but across a whole spectrum of aspects of our lives.

Queen’s University Belfast is leading a UK-wide trial called ‘Seroprevalence of SARS-Cov-2 infection in healthy children’ to measure antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) in healthy children.

Belfast-based researchers are playing their part in groundbreaking research on the DNA make-up of the Covid-19 virus.

The European Cancer Organisation, the largest multiprofessional cancer organisation in Europe, has announced today (Thursday 11 June 2020) the establishment of a Special Network on the impact of COVID-19 on cancer.

The Centre for Children’s Rights at Queen’s have launched a global survey for children and young people (aged 8-17 years) to get their views and experiences of ‘Life under Coronavirus’.

A research study from Queen’s has revealed how faith leaders and communities on the island of Ireland adapted and responded to the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic.

Testing for COVID-19 is now underway at the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI), significantly increasing the Department of Health’s testing capacity in Northern Ireland for COVID-19.

A new project to track how the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is impacting and affecting people’s mental health has found that one third of adults are worried about finances, such as bill payments and debts.

Queen’s University Belfast has today, 6 May 2020, launched a free online part-time Postgraduate Certificate (PgCert) in Software Development, to upskill and retrain individuals in programming, testing and computing foundations.

Belfast Region City Deal partners have said that confirmation of the NI Executive’s match funding of new investment for infrastructure, regeneration, and tourism projects will help the region’s economy recover from the effects of Covid-19.

Queen’s University Belfast has received funding to conduct a trial with the aim of developing a rapid diagnostic test for COVID-19.

Scientists are calling on the public to sign up to a new study which will help identify who is most at risk of contracting COVID-19 and why some people become more ill than others with the disease.

New research from Queen’s, the University of Split,Croatia and King’s College London has shown that the response to the outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019(COVID-19) is significantly affecting the treatment and care of patients with cancer.

Fusion Antibodies announces that the Company is working with Queen’s as part of The Northern Ireland Coronavirus Antibody Development Alliance (“NICADA”).

A new clinical trial led by Queen’s University Belfast and the University of Warwick seeks to find alternatives to ventilators to treat patients who are critically ill with COVID-19.

Queen’s University Belfast has joined forces with Ulster University and the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI) to significantly increase the Department of Health’s capacity for diagnostic testing of the coronavirus.

In response to the ongoing COVID-19 (Coronavirus) outbreak, Queen’s University Belfast has produced the following guidance for our staff and students.