The immune system reaction to COVID-19

This project seeks to understand how inflammation and immune dysfunction which are both found during COVID-19 disease contribute to the severity of the disease. The project examines a cohort of patients that are treated with plasma immunotherapy using plasma from recovered patients. As part of this a deep analysis of the immune system will be performed and to do this a new public-private partnership has been entered between Erasmus MC and Cytek Biosciences, a company that develops spectral flow cytometry instruments.

Currently, more than 45 thousand people in the Netherlands and 4 million people worldwide have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 the virus that causes COVID-19 disease. In the absence of a potent therapy, it is needed to understand when plasma therapy using plasma from recovered patients can help patients either recover faster or reduce the severity of disease. Therapeutic interventions, that can either prevent or shorten more severe COVID-19 disease, are expected to have beneficial long-term health consequences and this reduces future costs of care for these patients.

Developing high-dimensional spectral flow cytometry to interrogate large patient numbers in the CONCOVID plasma therapy trial will put this project in a unique position to answer some of the questions regarding the role of inflammation and immunity in the course of the COVID-19 disease and who will benefit from such treatment.

Deliverables include the measurement of virus-specific immunity during acute infection and later during post-recovery periods. Another deliverable is the measurement of the levels of mediators of inflammation and the type of cells that are activated during acute infection. Finally, these measurements will be used to identify the immunological predictors of plasma therapy success in COVID-19 patients.