The battle for New York City: Dr. Natasha Kyprianou on research and the post-coronavirus world
- Annie Brown
- Apr 30, 2020
- 4 min read
Updated: May 6, 2020
White field hospital tents in Central Park. Personal protective equipment including shields, gloves, masks and lab coats. Body bags loaded onto trucks.
This is the everyday reality for doctors in New York City, the epicenter of America’s COVID-19 outbreak, including for Dr. Natasha Kyprianou.
Kyprianou is a professor in the Departments of Urology and Oncological Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai Hospital. She is not an emergency response doctor; rather, she is a researcher at the Tisch Cancer Institute specializing in cancers of the kidneys, prostate and bladder.
In the heart of the city, she and her team have been on the front lines, using their cancer expertise to find solutions to possibly help cure current COVID-19 patients.
“For us, although we’re not in the ICU, we are in the middle of the battlefield. The biggest change is the conversion of the cafeteria and the major entrance to the hospital to ICU units,” Kyprianou said. “We do try to minimize walking through those areas and of course, wear personal protective equipment in terms of shields, gloves, lab coats, masks and coveralls.”
Death is an inevitable experience and an everyday occurrence in medicine, but the numbers of the COVID-19 pandemic deaths are disturbingly high, reports Kyprianou.
“This is going to sound morbid, but one of the most sobering realizations is that these patients are dying with no relatives around them, just the nurse taking care of them,” Kyprianou said. “Last week one evening when I was going home I saw on the other side of the Hess Center, there were four containers—people were loading body bags of patients who have died to either burn them or take them to an undisclosed location.”
Of all the everyday pandemic horrors, it’s the field hospital in Central Park across from Kyprianou’s home that reflects the gravity of the situation.
“The Good Samaritan field hospital is right across from my residence. So when I am walking to work, I see it. The most dramatic feeling is that you’re in the middle of a war zone. The white tents give you the impression that these are wounded soldiers that are being taken care of.”
New York City reached its peak death rate last week, with its numbers reaching about 800 deaths per day.
“When there are 800 people dying for ten days—a very large number of people dying in one day by one disease, even for New York City—it’s important to be aware,” said Dr. Kyprianou. “This is no time to not follow the rules. We’re talking about human lives here.”
Though New York City may still feel grim, the city reached a plateau with about 560 cases at the beginning of the week.
“The number of cases have been declining,” said Kyprianou. “We have 16,000 tests since the beginning that have been done. The positivity varies between 50-70%. Right now with the new serological tests, it’s much higher. The number of patients released have been increasing dramatically.”
Kyprianou’s colleagues at Mount Sinai in the Department of Microbiology have been responsible for the development of the brand-new serological test, which tests patients for COVID-19 at a higher accuracy rate. Though she’s been indirectly involved, Kyprianou has also been researching virus treatment.
“As cancer researchers though, we haven’t put that research on hold,” said Kyprianou. “We’ve noticed there are certain things that are shared between cancer and COVID-19 patients … A common denominator between COVID-19 and prostate cancer at the cellular level is a gene that is controlled by androgens. We have this theory that androgens … are facilitating the infection rate of COVID-19. Since we have a series of anti-androgen drugs—already FDA approved—that we are using for patients with advanced prostate cancer, maybe we can use some of them in patients with COVID-19.”
Currently, their study addresses cancer patients with COVID-19 and how the anti-androgen drug plays out against the virus.
“We’re looking at some of our cancer patients who also have COVID-19, and if they were treated with anti-androgens. If they are taking these anti-androgens, what is their release time from the hospital compared with patients who have never been exposed to anti-androgen drugs?”
As of now, there are no known treatments to COVID-19 that work effectively. Kyprianou emphasized the difficulty of using hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment option.
“Hydroxychloroquine is an inhibitor of apoptosis, or the ability of a cell to induce its own death,” said. Dr. Kyprianou, “So when you’re using hydroxychloroquine there are tremendous side effects. I know because some cancer patients use it. There are times during homeostasis where that’s important, but when you’re blocking the normal process of apoptosis, there are lots of side effects in the brain, the liver, the kidneys and the heart.”
Though treatment possibilities are still up in the air, cases are slowly declining by the day. After over a month of fighting all hours of the day and night, a respite is on the horizon. With that, though, a post-coronavirus world is emerging.
On April 26, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced plans to re-open New York City, starting with essential businesses.
“They have to think about how they’re going to reopen with this quote-unquote new normal,” Gov. Cuomo said, “What precautions they are going to take in the workplace, what safeguards they’re going to put in place.”
“The world will not be the same,” Kyprianou said. “There’s going to be a new norm for all of us. The theaters will open and the restaurants will be open, but there won’t be a lot of parties or large gatherings for a while. We have to get used to that. We need to practice loving others. We’ll come out as better human beings.”
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