Investigating the spatial distribution of the transcriptional response of respiratory tract epithelium to SARS-CoV-2 infections

Project Member(s): Faiz, A.

Funding or Partner Organisation: Maridulu Budyari Gumal - The Sydney Partnership for Health, Education, Research and Enterprise (SPHERE) (Maridulu Budyari Gumal - The Sydney Partnership for Health, Education, Research and Enterprise)
Maridulu Budyari Gumal - The Sydney Partnership for Health, Education, Research and Enterprise (SPHERE) (Maridulu Budyari Gumal - The Sydney Partnership for Health, Education, Research and Enterprise)

Start year: 2020

Summary: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the virus that causes COVID-19 disease. COVID-19 has now been defined as a global pandemic and is characterized by varying levels of severity. The severity of the disease is associated with various risk factors, including age, gender, comorbidities, and obesity (Caramelo, Ferreira et al. 2020).Conflicting data exist on the expression of SARS-CoV-2-related receptors, including ACE-2 and BSG, throughout the lungs (Aguiar, Tremblay et al. 2020, Sajuthi, DeFord et al. 2020). In addition, whereas in the majority of patients with mild disease, the infection is limited to the upper respiratory tract, in patients with a severe disease course the virus also affects additional parts of the respiratory tract (bronchial and alveolar compartment). Currently, it is not well understood why there are different severity grades of disease development between patients, and how different parts of the lungs are affected by this infection. To gain a better understanding into how SARS-CoV-2 affects different compartments of the human respiratory tract and how these compartments subsequently respond to the viral infection, we propose an in-depth analysis of SARS-CoV-2-infected human respiratory tract primary cell cultures and gene-edited cells and validate these findings in COVID-19 patient-derived epithelial cells.

Publications:

Johansen, MD, Irving, A, Montagutelli, X, Tate, MD, Rudloff, I, Nold, MF, Hansbro, NG, Kim, RY, Donovan, C, Liu, G, Faiz, A, Short, KR, Lyons, JG, McCaughan, GW, Gorrell, MD, Cole, A, Moreno, C, Couteur, D, Hesselson, D, Triccas, J, Neely, GG, Gamble, JR, Simpson, SJ, Saunders, BM, Oliver, BG, Britton, WJ, Wark, PA, Nold-Petry, CA & Hansbro, PM 2020, 'Animal and translational models of SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19.', Mucosal immunology, vol. 13, pp. 877-891.
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FOR Codes: Biological Sciences, Expanding Knowledge in the Biological Sciences