Claire Fleming, MS
Targeting IL-33/ST2 Axis as an Immunomodulatory Therapy for Severe COVID-19
Abstract
SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of COVID-19, remains a significant threat to public health. Pulmonary immunopathogenesis drives pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) in severe COVID-19. Therefore, dissecting the pulmonary immune response to SARS-CoV-2 infection is critical to understand disease pathogenesis and develop more effective therapeutics. Our lab has uncovered a novel link between type 2 immunity and COVID-19 severity and my preliminary experiments have found the alarmin cytokine IL-33, a known inducer of type 2 immune pathways in the lung, drives pathogenesis in a mouse model of COVID-19. The proposed research will elucidate the role of IL-33 signaling in the SARS-CoV-2-infected lung and will determine how therapeutic blockade of this cytokine leads to improved disease outcomes. This work will further our understanding of how modulation of type 2 immunity can serve as a novel therapeutic strategy in the treatment of respiratory viral infection.
I am honored to have been awarded a PhRMA Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship in Drug Discovery. This fellowship will support my career development and my continued research investigating immunomodulatory therapies for severe COVID-19.
