HDL's role in innate immunity and cardiovascular protection in diabetics with COVID-19

What area of diabetes research does your project cover? What role will this particular project play in preventing, treating and/or curing diabetes? COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, is particularly harmful for people with type-2 diabetes. Our project aims to understand how High Density Lipoprotein (HDL) particles may be protective against aspects of COVID-19. We normally think of HDL as the "good cholesterol" and protective against heart disease, but HDL also has important anti-viral roles in the body. We will try to discover if HDL can prevent infectivity of the novel coronavirus and also test if type-2 diabetes impairs some of HDL's protective antiviral properties. With this knowledge we hope to understand why people with diabetes have such severe outcomes with COVID-19. We also hope to be able to use HDL-related peptides as treatments for people with COVID-19. If a person with diabetes were to ask you how your project will help them in the future, how would you respond? Our project will help us define why people with diabetes are at higher risk of complications from COVID-19 (the disease caused by the novel coronavirus). With this knowledge we may be able to target those pathways to reduce severe COVID-19 outcomes in people with diabetes. Why is it important for you, personally, to become involved in diabetes research? What role will this award play in your research efforts? Our lab has been studying diabetes related heart disease for nearly 15 years. When the COVID outbreak emerged as one of the most important modern health problems, we knew we had to try to contribute. We had been studying HDL's protective properties against heart disease with diabetes. There is important literature supporting HDL may have antiviral properties also. We knew we had to try and contribute to understanding the interactions between COVID-19, HDL and diabetes. I am also a doctor taking care of patients with diabetes and see first-hand how important this problem is. Members of my lab and I are passionate about doing everything we can to reduce the burden of COVID-19. This award from ADA will help us do just that, particularly in patients with diabetes. In what direction do you see the future of diabetes research going? While we often break up diabetes into tow types (type 1 and type 2), we are now learning that there are many sub-types of diabetes in both of those categories. This is critical to understand because it can help us target treatments to the pathway that is abnormal, and also it can help us predict and prevent diabetic complications. I think the next revolution is to have precision diabetes medicine, in a similar way that oncologist have precision cancer therapies.