Quantitative Approaches to Understand Differential Immune Responses in COVID-19

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The novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 that emerged in late 2019 is the source of a global pandemic and ongoing public health crisis. Mounting evidence points to dysregulated and hyper-reactive inflammatory responses, including hyperinflammation and cytokine storms, as particular presentations in severe COVID-19. Further, since the start of the pandemic, the SARS-CoV-2 virus causing COVID-19 has evolved from its original RNA sequence that came from human transmission of an animal viral strain. Overall, the mechanisms of the immune response after infection (by the original or a mutated strain) remain to be delineated. Here we will develop quantitative tools with which we can interrogate SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 clinical manifestation to distinguish clinically-actionable diagnostic markers. This will be accomplished through a broad, international collaboration between academic, industrial, and health care partners who will work together to develop mathematical and computational platforms whose results will be immediately translated into pre-clinical and clinical settings, aiding to refine experimental questions and improve patient care. Ultimately, by improving our understanding of SARS-CoV-2 infection and immune responses to novel coronavirus, our results will rationalize the search for candidate therapies and the pre-clinical decision making process, and contribute to reducing clinical trial failures and bettering patient outcomes.