High-dimensional single cell profiling of the immune response to SARS-CoV2

There is clear evidence that severe cases of COVID-19 which require hospitalization due to respiratory distress are mediated by immunopathology. An urgent medical need is a predictive biomarker to identify patients based on their likelihood to develop severe COVID-19 disease. Furthermore, it is vital to understand how the immune system reacts to SARS-CoV-2 infection in general. For this purpose, we are collecting the peripheral blood mononuclear cells from patients with COVID-19 at defined timepoints during the course of disease (longitudinal study). The samples will then be transferred to the University Zurich where they will be mapped through high-throughput, high-dimensional single cell profiling to map the immune response to SARS-CoV-2. The samples will be specifically interrogated for the dynamic changes of all immune cell populations and particularly for the production of cytokines, which are emerging to be the main drivers of the immunopathology observed in severe COVID-19 cases. These results will be matched with thoroughly documented clinical courses of different patient populations to uncover longitudinal changes of immune signatures during COVID-19 infection and after disease resolution. As a hypothesis we expect different patterns of alterations that are associated with and might explain different clinical outcomes, serving as a basis for the discovery of biomarkers predicting severe COVID-19 disease. Keywords single cell analysis; pattern recognition; biomarkers; cytokine response; machine learning; immune response; acute respiratory distress syndrome Hauptdisziplin Infektionskrankheiten