Mount Sinai IMPACC COVID-19 Cores

As part of an NIAID/DAIT initiative we have been selected to participate in a multicenter project, namelyImmunophenotyping assessment in a COVID-19 Cohort (IMPACC), aimed to collect and distribute patientsamples and to and analyze the immune responses of 2000 COVID19 patients using specific designatedcores. The main purpose of this nationwide immunophenotyping protocol in high impact COVID-19 areas isto perform detailed immunophenotyping and analysis of the host factors that may predict or predispose toresolution of infection versus disease progression and its consequences. The protocol has been designed toinform disease progression dynamics and related biomarkers; and conduct detailed, longitudinalimmunophenotyping (presentation through disease progression) that includes measures of viral load tounderstand the interplay between viral load and immune pathology in disease progression. There is anemphasis on the clinical progression by including all aspects of clinical characterization that will be neededto match immunopathogenesis with each disease stage within each patient. IMPACC builds on the cohortsand clinical resources and technology developed by the NAIAD/DAIT funded Clinical centers for HumanImmunology (CCHI) and the Human Immunology Project Consortia (HIPC). Thus, our team has beenselected by DAIT to participate, since Dr. Fernandez-Sesma is currently the PI of one of the HIPC centers,named DHIPC, which studies human immune responses to dengue, chikungunya and Zika virus infectionand vaccination and Dr. Adeeb Rahman is also a crucial member of the same HIPC center and will be theImmonophenotyping core leader for this application. Additionally, other members of the team have beenselected to participate based on their expertise in clinical sample collection and processing in hospitalsettings to analyze responses to respiratory viral infections, including viral sequencing and viral loadmeasurement. Thus, this administrative supplement to our parent HIPC grant, named Mt Sinai IMPACC iswithin the scope of our parent HIPC award, since it is focused on the study of human immune responses to aviral infection. The team gathered for this application includes Dr. Viviana Simon, leading the clinical/samplecollection core, Dr. Adeb Rahman, that will lead the immunopheotyping core, Dr. Florian Krammer, leadingthe serology Core, Dr. Harm Van Bakel, leading the virus sequencing core as well as Dr. Adolfo Garcia-Sastre as a co-investigator and Dr. Jaime Hook as a pulmonologist in the clinic. With this team and theavailability of clinical samples and the appropriate resources and biocontainment at our site we are poised toprovide samples and to analyze the different immune and viral parameters that will help us understanddisease severity and progression in during the COVID19 pandemic. Mount Sinai Hospital is located in NewYork City, which is at the epicenter of this pandemic in the US and is already treating hundreds of COVIDpatients.