COVID-19 IDentification of Epitopes and Antibodies (COVID-IDEA)

Summary

The COVID-19 pandemic has seen an unprecedented number of research studies initiated and rolled out across the globe. Much of the research has focused on characterising the disease and defining therapeutic strategies for the acute infectious event, largely because they have imposed a considerable burden on health systems across the world. Here, we propose to undertake an in-depth analysis of the antigenic specificities recognised by the immune system in patients from across a spectrum of disease phenotypes and severity. The results will provide new insight into the molecular nature of host immunity, and will begin to establish the features that constitute herd immunity and immune memory. We hope to generate data that will identify specific characteristics of subsets of immune effector cells that may have been responsible for some of the devastating outcomes suffered by patients during the first wave of the pandemic. 

Participation: For this study, 61 participants from the COVID-19 BioResource took part by providing a small blood sample.

Organisation: This study is organised by Professor Andrew Cope and Dr Michele Mishto, from the Centre for Inflammation Biology and Cancer Immunology King's College London, and also Dr Katie Doores from the Department of Infectious Diseases, Guy’s Hospital, London.