To further accelerate COVID-19 research on a global scale, investigators from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus have created a multidimensional dataset, known as the COVIDome dataset, derived from hospitalized COVID-19 patients versus negative controls. The team has now launched a public online portal called the COVIDome Explorer to share that data in real time. Today, a new paper published in the journal Cell Reports details how the datasets were generated while explaining how to use the COVIDome Explorer for rapid hypotheses testing, hypothesis generation and real-time discoveries by experts and non-experts.
In the past year, the COVID-19 pandemic has delivered unprecedented challenges across the world. Much is known about the factors that increase the risk of contracting severe COVID-19: age, race and a host of underlying conditions. Yet some people in these categories escape serious illness and death while some young, otherwise healthy people fall prey to the disease. Even among hospitalized COVID-19 patients there are considerable differences in the effects. But, why?
In this eLife publication, the COVIDome Project team describes multi-omics analyses revealing that hospitalized COVID-19 patients who have produced antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 have different underlying pathophysiology than those who haven't yet produced an antibody response. These results suggest that seroconversion status could be used as a biosignature to stratify patients for therapeutic intervention.
COVIDome team member Dr. Angelo D’Alessandro, who himself was affected with COVID-19 in early 2020, spent much of the year studying the disease, examining how the virus attacks the body at the cellular level. His team’s research found SARS-CoV-2 damages the membranes of red blood cells, accounting for diminished resistance to stress of the cell that transports oxygen, offering explanations into why symptoms can linger.