TY  - JOUR
A1  - Gupta, Shishir K.
A1  - Srivastava, Mugdha
A1  - Minocha, Rashmi
A1  - Akash, Aman
A1  - Dangwal, Seema
A1  - Dandekar, Thomas
T1  - Alveolar regeneration in COVID-19 patients: a network perspective
JF  - International Journal of Molecular Sciences
N2  - A viral infection involves entry and replication of viral nucleic acid in a host organism, subsequently leading to biochemical and structural alterations in the host cell. In the case of SARS-CoV-2 viral infection, over-activation of the host immune system may lead to lung damage. Albeit the regeneration and fibrotic repair processes being the two protective host responses, prolonged injury may lead to excessive fibrosis, a pathological state that can result in lung collapse. In this review, we discuss regeneration and fibrosis processes in response to SARS-CoV-2 and provide our viewpoint on the triggering of alveolar regeneration in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients.
KW  - COVID-19
KW  - SARS-CoV-2
KW  - alveolar regeneration
KW  - alveolar fibrosis
KW  - signaling pathway
KW  - network biology
Y1  - 2021
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-284307
SN  - 1422-0067
VL  - 22
IS  - 20
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Liang, Chunguang
A1  - Bencurova, Elena
A1  - Psota, Eric
A1  - Neurgaonkar, Priya
A1  - Prelog, Martina
A1  - Scheller, Carsten
A1  - Dandekar, Thomas
T1  - Population-predicted MHC class II epitope presentation of SARS-CoV-2 structural proteins correlates to the case fatality rates of COVID-19 in different countries
JF  - International Journal of Molecular Sciences
N2  - We observed substantial differences in predicted Major Histocompatibility Complex II (MHCII) epitope presentation of SARS-CoV-2 proteins for different populations but only minor differences in predicted MHCI epitope presentation. A comparison of this predicted epitope MHC-coverage revealed for the early phase of infection spread (till day 15 after reaching 128 observed infection cases) highly significant negative correlations with the case fatality rate. Specifically, this was observed in different populations for MHC class II presentation of the viral spike protein (p-value: 0.0733 for linear regression), the envelope protein (p-value: 0.023), and the membrane protein (p-value: 0.00053), indicating that the high case fatality rates of COVID-19 observed in some countries seem to be related with poor MHC class II presentation and hence weak adaptive immune response against these viral envelope proteins. Our results highlight the general importance of the SARS-CoV-2 structural proteins in immunological control in early infection spread looking at a global census in various countries and taking case fatality rate into account. Other factors such as health system and control measures become more important after the early spread. Our study should encourage further studies on MHCII alleles as potential risk factors in COVID-19 including assessment of local populations and specific allele distributions.
KW  - COVID-19
KW  - population coverage
KW  - MHC II
KW  - MHC I
KW  - B-cell
KW  - T-cell
KW  - epitope mapping
KW  - lethality rate
KW  - infection spread
KW  - SARS-CoV-2
Y1  - 2021
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-258936
SN  - 1422-0067
VL  - 22
IS  - 5
ER  -