More research needs to be carried out to identify novel treatments and means of identifying people at risk of more severe effects upon infection. COVID-19 and many other viruses kill or cause severe effects due to cytokine storms which the body produces in an attempt to get rid of the pathogen. We hereby propose to identify genes that regulate levels of molecules that show deranged expression after infection with SARS-Cov-2. The latter will be identified in data already publicly available from COVID-19 patients.
Transcriptome RNASeq and whole genome sequencing of around 1000 individuals from a collection of samples banked by the University of Malta will be carried out. A combination of approaches, including family-based studies and biological pathway analysis, will be adopted to mine this high throughput sequencing data for relevant genes and genetic variants that will serve to identify novel drug targets. Genetic variants that alter risk for severity of COVID-19 infection will also be highlighted. The extensive data obtained will be useful beyond the end of this project as it can be used for any other pathogen that influences gene expression in blood, besides being useful for other inflammatory conditions such as myocardial infarction.
The aims of this project are to generate two datasets (RNA transcriptome and WGS of 1000 individuals), that used together will be readily available to identify novel drug targets for any infectious disease where disruption of gene expression in blood cells is a critical factor, and to use these datasets to find novel drug targets for COVID-19 and susceptibility genes for COVID-19 infection.
