Post-COVID Omics - Integrative analysis of multi-omics data and immune function during long/post COVID and target search for therapeutic use
Project leader: Prof. Dr. Yang Li
Research field
- Basic and translational research on post COVID
Who is involved?
- Prof. Dr. Yang Li (Project leader, HZI, CiiM)
- Prof. Dr. Thomas Illig (MHH)
- Dr. Isabell Pink (MHH)
- Dr. Sonja Volland (MHH)
What is the aim?
Long and post COVID are complex heterogeneous disorders that affect 10-20 % of all SARS-CoV-2- infected patients. With increasing time, the number of symptomatic patients decreases, but approximately 2 % of patients are still suffering after 12 weeks from post COVID. The most common symptoms are fatigue, dyspnea, anosmia, ageusia, headache, joint pain, cough, cognitive and sleep disturbances. No specific symptoms are specified for diagnosis, also due to lack of pathognomonic or laboratory chemistry findings. The pathomechanism of long/post COVID and the involved molecular and immunological functions are still unclear. To reduce the burdens that come with a long/post COVID infection we want to perform an integrative multi-omics analysis on biosamples of 248 post COVID patients from more than 500 time-points, followed by a target search for therapeutic use. The multi- omics datasets will comprise GWAS chips, transcriptome, proteome and metabolome, as well as single- cell epigenome and transcriptome data from different time-points during post COVID infection, as well as from population controls. Our three main objectives are (I) to describe the inter-individual molecular dynamics during and post COVID infection, that comprises many molecular markers related to the immune response and inter-individual variability. (II) We will ascertain how each molecular marker contributes to the inter-individual dynamics. (III) Finally, we will build a model that will predict the clinical outcome of an individual with long/post COVID, and the targets that could be used for therapeutic treatment.