Exploring the Genetic Architecture of Clinical Clusters of COVID-19 Patients.

It has been observed that critically ill COVID-19 patients exhibit a wide range of clinical phenotypes which also affect the patients' response to treatment. The group I am joining has shown that 25 genes are significantly associated with individual risk of developing serious illness following infection with SARS-CoV-2. Understanding the genetic background of COVID-19 patients may improve current treatment of the disease by identifying therapeutic targets. I aim to divide a set of 8788 critically ill COVID-19 patients into different groups based on clinical information available at the time of hospitalization. By comparing the effect sizes for known genetic associations across clinical subgroups, I aim to identify genetic markers for differential therapeutic effect. My project will deepen understanding of the genetic mechanisms underlying critical illness in COVID-19 and may discover genetic predictions of differential therapeutic effect that could, in future, direct the design of stratified clinical trials.