Bob Winchester, MD, “The search for HLA alleles associated with adverse outcomes to SARS-CoV-2 infection”
The Winchester group is investigating the hypothesis that the outcome of SARS-CoV-2 infection is correlated with the complement of the major histocompatibility complex class I (MHC-I) of the patient, i.e. the patient’s ability to present short fragments of viral proteins on their cell surface, which can then be detected as foreign by CD8+ T cells. The group is planning to test for an association between the MHC-I alleles encoded in the patient genome and disease severity. If such an association is found, it can then be used to construct a Risk Score that predicts the probability of adverse outcomes. Such an association would also enable the identification of viral peptides that are recognized particularly well by CD8+ T cells.
