Dr. Qian Junbin's research reveals in-depth characterization of the immunological mechanisms underlying mild vs critical COVID-19
Covid-19 pandemic is still rampant all over the global, posing a huge threat to human life. As reported by WHO, there have been more than 100 million confirmed cases globally. While most COVID-19 patients (80%) remain asymptomatic or experience only mild symptoms, 20% present with overt pneumonia; about a quarter of these progressing to critical cases.
Recently, Dr. Qian Junbin from WHZJU and the research team led Prof. Diether Lambrechts from the University of Leuven co-published a article entitled "Discriminating mild from critical COVID-19 by innate and adaptive immune single-cell profiling of bronchoalveolar lavages" in Cell Research. This research used single-cell transcriptomics to characterize the innate and adaptive lung immune response to SARS-CoV-2. The results showed marked changes in the immune cell compositions, phenotypes as well as immune cross-talks during SARS-CoV-2 infection and identified several distinguishing immunological features of mild vs critical COVID-19. The research also documented genetic footprints of several immunological pathways that have been extensively hypothesized, but not always systematically confirmed, to be associated with COVID-19 pathology and SARS-CoV-2 infection biology. This work represents a major resource for understanding lung-localized immunity during COVID-19 and holds great promise for the study of COVID-19 immunology, immune-monitoring of COVID-19 patients and relevant therapeutic development.
The paper is accessible online at:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41422-020-00455-9