ACE2, TMPRSS2 and SLC6A15 variants as candidates of shaping the COVID-19 severity

Principal Investigator: 
Prof. em. Dr. Matthias A. Hediger, Group Leader and Head of Membrane Transport Discovery Lab, Department of Nephrology and Hypertension, Inselspital, Bern University Hospital. and Nephrology and Hypertension Research Group, Department for Biomedical Research, University of Bern. For more information, please visit the website.

Co-Investigator:
Prof. Dr. med. Bruno Vogt, Head of Department of Nephrology and Hypertension, Inselspital, Bern University Hospital and Nephrology and Hypertension Research Group, Department for Biomedical Research, University of Bern

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) exhibits a wide range of clinical manifestations, from very mild or no symptoms, to flu-like symptoms, pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome and even death. Besides risk factors such as age, diabetes, hypertension, etc., we hypothesize that this is due to genetic variations of specific human host genes. In our project, we will investigate the roles of such variations in the predisposition to COVID-19 infection and disease severity. We expect that our results will foster rapid validation in large cohorts of patients with different clinical manifestation and help develop risk-adapted safety and treatment strategies based on knowledge of the patients’ genotypic makeup.