COVID-19 Breakthrough from ARCAID researchers

One of the PIs working in the ARCAID project is Jeroen den Dunnen (mentor of ESR 15 and 16, Sona Allahverdiyeva and Chiara Geyer) and due to the COVID-19 restrictions, these two fellows could not yet work on their intended research in ARCAID, but have been working on unravelling the immunology behind the COVID-19 infection instead. Now they are part of a breakthrough; see below!

Why COVID-19 do patients become critically ill after around 1.5 weeks?

Scientists at the Amsterdam University Medical Centers (Menno de Winther, professor in vascular immunological celbiology and Jeroen van Dunnen, immunology expert in the area of antibodies,discovered why COVID-19 patients can have such different reactions after being admitted to the IC. Their research showed that the production of antibodies with a divergent structure can cause an overreaction of the immune cells in the lungs. They also found an existing medicin that may dampen this overreaction, which is currently being tested on patients. When effective, this could help lowering the number of IC admissions.

See their publication in Science Translational Medicine provides an explanation (and potential therapy). See the movie for how it works and why they think this could be (very) important.