Xinchen Wang and David Goldstein: Transcriptional inhibition of viral entry proteins as a therapeutic strategy SARS CoV 2
TMPRSS2 could be another target, besides ACE2 for transcriptional inhibition. TMPRSS2 expression is affected by estradiol and there has been some indication that this observation may also be occurring in the lung. The regulation of TMPRSS2 expression by estradiol is interesting given the reported severity of COVID 19 effect on men and the elderly, those that have gone through puberty, more. Drs. Wang and Goldstein are interested in determining whether TMPRSS2 gene expression causally affects COVID-19 severity. Their hypotheses will be: TMPRSS2 expression in lung at the time of infection correlates with disease severity, and that COVID 19 patients with severe symptoms have higher TMPRSS2 expression than patients with mild symptoms.
