RAPID IDENTIFICATION OF THERAPEUTIC TARGETS TO OPTIMIZE CRITICALLY ILL COVID-19 PATIENT OUTCOMES [Funder: Lawson/LHSCF]

COVID-19 is spreading rapidly and intensive care units (ICUs) are being quickly overwhelmed. Patients admitted to the ICU have a high rate of death, and only supportive therapies are available. Our research team of international clinicians/scientists is uniquely positioned to rapidly identify novel therapeutic targets to optimize the care of critically ill COVID-19 patients. We are the first in Canada to generate a large repository of COVID-19 positive/negative blood samples obtained from critically ill patients. We propose that state-of-the-art targeted and untargeted analyses of these samples will allow us to rapidly identify immune, inflammatory and coagulation candidates/pathways to develop therapies to treat COVID-19. As this disease is strongly associated with lung pathology, and data from early patient observations shows altered microvascular function, we will also use our samples in functional studies with human pulmonary microvascular endothelial cells. Both approaches are required to identify therapeutic targets and provide biomarkers for future interventional studies (i.e. patient stratification). Added benefits of our work include: (1) all data will be made publicly available to all qualified Scientists for mining, including RNA sequencing, proteomics and metabolomics data; and (2) the provision of samples to the Canadian Vaccine Initiative. Our Ontario-led research is positioned to identify novel COVID-19 therapies that will save lives provincially, nationally and around the world.