Nature: Heavy! Scientists have identified a new key gene that could help develop COVID-19 therapy!

14, 2020 // -- In a recent study published in the international journal Nature, scientists from the University of Edinburgh and others found five key genes associated with severe disease forms, or promising to help develop new potential treatments for COVID-19.
Genetic evidence is second only to clinical trials in determining which treatments are effective in treating diseases, and drugs that currently target the activity of these genes may help reveal which drugs can be redirected to treat COVID-19 in clinical trials.
in this study, researchers targeted two key genes involved in the molecular process, the antiviral immune response and the inflammatory response to the lungs, and the results are expected to help clinicians understand how COVID-19 impairs lung function at the molecular level.
researchers analyzed DNA from 2,700 patients in 208 ICUs in the UK.
they compared the genetic information of COVID-19 patients in the ICU with those of healthy volunteer samples in other studies, such as the British Biological Sample Bank.
Photo Source: CC0 Public Domain Results Researchers found key differences between five specific genes in the ICU's COVID-19 sample, IFNAR2, TYK2, OAS1, DPP9, and CCR2, which may partly explain why some people are more susceptible to COVID-19, while others are not.
emphasizing these genes, the researchers then began to predict the therapeutic effects of drug therapy on patients, as certain gene mutations may respond similarly to specific drugs.
, for example, the researchers say that a decrease in the activity of the TYK2 gene may protect the body from COVID-19, and that an anti-inflammatory drug called JAK inhibitors, including the drug Baritinib, may also have this effect.
In addition, the researchers found that the increased activity of the gene IFNAR2 may also have protective effects because it can simulate the effects of interferon therapy, a special protein released by the body's immune cells that protects against viral infections, but cautions that in order to be effective, patients should probably start treatment in the early stages of the disease.
clinical trials conducted by researchers focus on drugs that target these specific antiviral or anti-inflammatory path pathps.
researcher Kenneth Baillie says this is an amazing realization of using human genetics to help understand critical diseases, just as sepsis and influenza virus infections do, and that the lung damage caused by COVID-19 is often caused by the body's own immune system, not by the virus, and that our genetics study provides a roadmap for the complexity of immune signals and reveals ways to target key drugs.
The results of this paper highlight which drugs should be at the top of the clinical trial list, with researchers testing only concentrated drugs at a time, so making the right choices may save thousands of patients;
() Original source: Pairo-Castineira, E., Clohisey, S., Klaric, L. et al. Genetic mechanisms of critical illness in Covid-19. Nature (2020). doi:10.1038/s41586-020-03065-y。