The Immunology of COVID-19: A dynamic immune signature for prognosis and spatial transcriptomics of lung tissue

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) emerged in December 2019 and has spread globally, causing a pandemic of respiratory illness designated coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Two studies on the immunology of COVID-19 are included in this webinar: First, Miguel Muñoz-Ruiz, PhD from the Francis Crick Institute and his colleagues have identified several traits, including cytokine and chemokine profiles, and the status of defined immune cell subsets that may facilitate the early identification of COVID-19 patients at greatest risk for requiring prolonged hospital treatment. Second, Arutha Kulasinghe, PhD and his colleagues at Queensland University of Technology used spatial transcriptomics to generate an in-depth picture of the pulmonary transcriptional landscape of patients who died of COVID-19, and compared it to those who died of pandemic H1N1 (pH1N1) influenza and uninfected control patients. Host transcriptomics showed a significant upregulation of genes associated with inflammation, type I interferon production, coagulation and angiogenesis in the lungs of COVID-19 patients compared to non-infected controls.

Learning Objectives:

1. Understand the current knowledge on the dynamics of the immune response to COVID-19

2. Learn what immune signatures are associated with a poor COVID-19 prognosis

3. Understand the differences between transcriptional profiles of lungs from COVID-19 patients versus those infected with influenza and non-infected controls

4. Learn how NanoString nCounter® technology and the GeoMx® Digital Spatial Profiler can be used to study COVID-19