Clinical Studies
18 clinical studies, for diseases ranging from infection to autoimmunity and allergy, have been initiated by MI partners or collaborators, that utilize either MI standardized immunomonitoring tools or healthy donors as a reference control. Below is a selected list of selected clinical studies with associated publications.
COVID-19
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the coordinators and partners, of MI mobilized their efforts towards collaborative projects to understand factors driving COVID-19 severity. Methods developed by the MI project were extensively utilized for these studies.
Identification of low levels of type-I IFN in plasma precede clinical worsening and transfer to intensive care (Hadjadj et al., Science 2020). Significant minority of patients with serious COVID-19, the interferon response was crippled by genetic defects or by anti-interferon auto-antibodies (Bastard et al., Science 2020; Zhang et al., Science 2020). Read more about studies performed by the members of the MI consortium
(Image caption/credit: Scanning electron microscopy obtained image of human bronchial cells infected with SARS-CoV-2. Image by Institut Pasteur/Rémy Robinot, Mathieu Hubert, Vincent Michel, Olivier Schwartz and Lisa Chakrabarti, and colorized by Jean Marc Panaud)
Spondyloarthritis (SpA)
In collaboration with L.Rogge (Institut Pasteur) we identified an immune response signature in SpA patients that predicted responses to anti-TNF therapy (Menegatti et al., 2020).
Tuberculosis
HERO IMAGE OF HISTORICAL TUBERCULOSIS STUDIES AT INSTITUT PASTEUR side by side
D. Duffy, M. Albert (InSitro) and T. Scriba (SATVI, South Africa) identified different immune
response pathways perturbed in Tuberculosis. This study is funded by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (Duffy et al., 2020).
Influenza Vaccines
D.Duffy is collaborating in an Indo-European consortium funded by Horizon 2020 to develop next generation influenza vaccines. https://www.incentive-h2020.eu/en/
Multiple sclerosis
F. Michel, C. Papeix and E. Maillard (Pitié-Salpêtrière) measured the expression of around 600 genes in stimulated blood and the level of circulating IFNa/b in treated and non-treated patients.
Immune Deficiency
In collaboration with Persimune (Denmark) we are studying if there is a common pattern of un-discovered risk factors exist that explains the known variation in risk of infectious complications within patient populations with impaired immune function.
Type 1 Diabetes
K. Tarbell (USA) and D. Duffy identified perturbed interferon resposnes in patients with Type 1 Diabetes (Rodrigues et al., 2020). D Duffy and R. Lee (UCL, UK) are now applying these findings to identify predictive biomarkers for retinopathy development.
Allergy to wasp venom or penicillin
F. Jönsson is recruiting a cohort of severely allergic patients to compare their immune phenotype to healthy donors.
Healthy Human Global Project (HHGP) Senegal project
Recruitment of the pilot study of 48 healthy donors is complete and analysis is ongoing.
Viral resistance project
C. O’Farrelly (Ireland) and D. Duffy are exploring immune response differences in a population of healthy women that received a blood transfusion contaminated with HCV but showed no signs of infection.
Urinary Tract Infection (UTI)
M. Ingersoll and D. Duffy are studying immune response differences in young women with recurrent UTI.