Below listed joint research projects on COVID-19 at or together with the Wuhan-Essen Joint International Laboratory of Infection and Immunity are generously supported by Stiftung Universitätsmedizin: During the time of travel restrictions due to the Corona crisis we continuously hold video conferences and jointly discuss the project progress.

The development of new, quickly available therapy options is of great importance to help COVID-19 patients, in particular those who are seriously ill. These are antibody preparations that are made from the blood of people who have already had an infection with the pathogen and have thus formed protective antibodies. However, there are currently insufficient test options to identify people with particularly high antibody titers. For this purpose, two test methods are to be developed as part of the planned research project, with which antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 can be detected quickly and reliably. This is a so-called ELISA test procedure and a SARS-CoV-19 specific neutralization test. Both processes are developed at University Hospital Essen in close cooperation with Prof. Baoju Wang, Wuahn, who already has extensive experience in this area.

Activated cytotoxic T cells are an important part of adaptive antiviral immunity. These cells recognize infected cells with the intracellular pathogen and kill these target cells. Most previous studies focused on cytotoxic CD8 + T cells as a more common effector population. In critical situations, however, CD4 + helper T cells also become cytotoxic and are involved in the elimination of infected cells. Immunological characterization of SARS-CoV2-infected patients in Wuhan made it clear that the population of cytotoxic CD8 + T cells was greatly reduced during the development of pneumonia. In addition, the severity of COVID disease was associated with a decrease in cytotoxic T cells, which are responsible for the detection and elimination of infected cells. Based on these findings, we want to conduct studies to characterize cytotoxic effector CD8 + and CD4 + T cells from SARS-CoV2-infected patients and compare the data of these patients with that of healthy donors. The aim is to better understand the T cell-mediated elimination of SARS-CoV2-infected cells and the control of the virus. We suspect that this knowledge could be a basis for the future development of immunomodulatory therapy for acute viral infection.

Attempts are currently being made under high pressure to find an effective antiviral treatment for COVID-19 patients. The effectiveness of well-known drugs such as e.g. Chloroquine (anti-malaria medication), lopinavir ritonavir (HIV medication) or favipiravir (influenza, Ebola medication). Interferon (IFN) α was already discovered in 1957 and can "intervene" in a virus infection. IFNα has been used in the treatment of chronic HCV and HBV patients since 1990, but so far only the IFNα2 subtype has been used therapeutically against chronic viral infections and various cancers. In our laboratory, we have already recombinantly produced all 12 human IFN-α subtypes and various mutants to test their different antiviral activities against various viruses such as e.g. HIV to investigate HBV. Therefore, we would like to investigate the antiviral properties of the different IFNα subtypes and mutants against SARS-CoV-2 in the cell culture model.
We are already investigating the expression of the different IFNα subtypes after infection with HBV and we would like to extend this work to the investigation of Covid-19 patients with different disease courses in China and Germany. Infection with SARS-CoV-2 leads to an increased expression of various proinflammatory cytokines, however the induction of IFN has not yet been investigated. With the help of the new findings from this research project, more differentiated interferon therapies against Covid-19 could be developed in the future.

So far little is known about the new SARS coronavirus-2 and its replication cycle. Our research group has carried out a number of tests in the past to understand the formation of the hepatitis B virus (HBV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV). This previous experience of our working group should be used to analyze the formation of the SARS-CoV-2 particles. The first step is to take stock of how SARS-CoV-2 manages the formation of new virus particles in infected host cells. Host cells such as Vero cells and human endothelia cells are infected with SARS-CoV-2. The expression of the coronaviral proteins N and spike are determined in Western blots and their intracellular distributions are examined by confocal microscopy. The importance of the cellular compartment for the formation of virus particles is understood through the inhibition of the corresponding processes. The dependence of the formation of the SARS-CoV-2 particles on the cellular structures and processes can be used to modulate virus replication and to influence pathogens of the infection.