Researchers at Lawson Health Science Institute in London, Ont., are combining new technologies to examine blood proteins in COVID-19 patients in an attempt to discover a different form of treatment.
According to the study, published in the Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, a team at Lawson has discovered “unique patterns of blood plasma proteins in critically ill patients that may help develop a more personalized approach to treating severe COVID-19.”
Known as the plasma proteome, the proteins being studied are released by cells, which often play an important role in the body’s immune response to viruses, researchers noted.
But Dr. Douglas Fraser, a Lawson scientist, critical care physician at the Children’s Hospital at LHSC and a professor at Western University’s Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, said COVID-19 is not a typical virus when it comes to treatment.
“It’s a new virus, it’s very transmissible, it moves around very quickly, frequently mutates, and it causes the body to have a strong immune response that happens very early after infection,” he explained. “So by the time people are presenting to hospital, the infection is usually taken quite a grip on the body already.”
Fraser added that for the most part, antiviral drugs and supportive care are used to treat COVID-19. However, in studying proteins found in the blood, the research team is also studying how the proteins adapt and change to a COVID-19 infection.
Outlined in the study, blood samples were taken from 30 subjects in three patient groups at LHSC. One group had patients with COVID-19, the second had patients with severe infections but who tested negative for COVID-19, and the third was a “healthy control group.”
Blood samples were then drawn on the day of each patient’s critical care admission and again on days three, seven and 10 in hospital.
“We collected plasma from these patients and measured well over a thousand proteins with great accuracy using new technology that combines immunology and genomics,” Fraser said. “With the use of this advanced technology, we were able to better analyze the protein patterns and better understand what is happening with COVID-19, especially in critically ill patients.
“We can start to blend what’s happening in people during their COVID-19 infection at different time points and we can see which drugs are most likely to interrupt the processes going on,” he continued. “It gives us an opportunity to understand the disease better, but also, in a very rational way, to determine which medications might actually prove useful in terms of intervening.”
The team found through the study that COVID-19 patients demonstrated “changes in immunosuppression pathways, which typically keeps the immune system balanced.”
In critically ill patients, the changes were reportedly heightened. Analyses of the plasma proteome helped researchers “determine which cells in the body are active during the disease state and which signaling pathways were activated,” the study explained.
“In-depth analysis of the human plasma proteome helps us capture tissue proteins that can provide us with information regarding organ integrity during infection,” Cristiana Iosef, research associate PhD, said in a statement. “This is important because it will allow us to search for new blood biomarkers that are specific for COVID-19 patients.”
Fraser added that the next step in the study “is to look at the drugs which look promising and have not been used before, and then to decide which ones might be reasonable to try in a clinical trial to see if they truly interrupt the process and help the patient improve.”
Additionally, the next steps for the research team will be to use the technology to “examine plasma biomarkers in long COVID-19 patients” to determine why some develop prolonged disease after the infection.
“This study has allowed us to understand the progression of the disease processes in very sick patients, providing us clues on the body’s immune system and other systems that were reacting to the severe disease,” said Dr. Victor Han, Lawson scientist, director of CHRI and professor at Schulich Medicine and Dentistry.
“We hope that this knowledge will allow us to identify the patients who will become severely ill and develop new therapies to counteract the changes occurring within their bodies.”