As part of the scientific community trying to understand the varied and curious symptoms caused by COVID-19, the Benaroya Research Institute (BRI) at Virginia Mason announced Tuesday that it has received more than $5.8 million dollars from the National Institutes of Health to fund four studies.
The nonprofit Seattle institute for decades has focused on studying autoimmune and immune system diseases, including type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis (MS), Crohn’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis and allergies, and its COVID-related research investigates the body’s response to the virus.
“Our vision is for a healthy immune system for every individual,” said BRI president Dr. Jane Buckner in a statement. “As part of that work, we lend our immunology expertise and tools to help uncover answers to the COVID-19 puzzle — why some people experience a more severe infection, to what underlying factors may dictate a worse infection.”
BRI was already working on nearly a dozen COVID-focused projects. The NIH funding supports these additional efforts:
Immune responses in people hospitalized with COVID-19
This $2.6 million study is part of a broader effort called the COVID Immunophenotyping Study (IMPACC) that includes 10 institutions nationwide. BRI scientists will take samples from approximately 1,000 COVID patients and sequence RNA found in the samples to better understand how the body is making in response to the disease. The researchers will look for unique biomarkers, such as proteins or genes, that will help researchers understand the progression of the disease and develop treatments for it. The local leader for the 14-month study is Dr. Buckner.
Studying immune response in patients with mild to severe symptoms
To better understand what’s happening in the cells of COVID patients, this $1.4 million study will compare patients infected with the two major strains of SARS-CoV-2 found in Seattle and how the strains correlate with mild to severe symptoms. The goal is to tease out the differences in cellular immune response to the novel coronavirus variations. The study lead is William Kwok.
COVID-19’s impact on lung tissue
Researchers will use “a lung in a dish” model system to simulate a human lung and study the response of immune cells to the virus. The $1.1 million study led by Steve Ziegler will try to understand how the virus gets into cells that line the lung, called epithelial cells, which could lead to treatments that prevent lung infection.
Overactive inflammatory immune response to COVID-19
Some patients with severe COVID-19 suffer from an inflammatory syndrome called a cytokine storm, which is a reaction where the body overreacts to an infection, releasing too many cytokine proteins and attacking its own cells. The 17-month project led by Jessica Hamerman received $609,000 from NIH. The researchers are studying whether the cytokine storm in COVID cases is similar to another disorder, called hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH), which could suggest helpful therapies.
Other Seattle-area organizations are also researching the intersection of COVID-19 and immunology. They include a partnership between Adaptive Biotechnologies and Microsoft to map immune response to coronavirus, A-Alpha Bio’s research to identify antibodies that bind the virus, and the Infectious Disease Research Institute’s clinical trials using immunotherapy treatments.
