HYpothesizing the Genesis of Infectious Diseases and Epidemics through an Integrated Systems Biology Approach
Description
Financé par le « Sofina Solidarity Fund » via la Fondation Saint-Luc, le projet HYGIEIA a permis de renforcer l’équipement et le personnel des plateformes « omiques » existantes, en parallèle avec le développement de protoclos spécifiques optimisés pour l’étude de la physiopathologie de l’infection au SARS-COV-2, et en particulier aux mécanismes sous-jacents au syndrôme de « COVID long ».
Initialement monocentrique, le recrutement pour cette étude a été étendu au Grand Hôpital de Charleroi (GHDC), CHU Namur-Mont-Godinne, Clinique de l’Europe et Clinique Saint-Pierre, Ottignies.
Plus largement, le projet est intégré dans le portefeuille de projets « MedReSyst » (« Medecine des Réseaux et des Systèmes » ; https://medresyst.org/) de l’Initiative d’Innovation Stratégique de la Région Wallonne dans le cadre des financements FEDER de la Commission Européenne.
Une description complète du projet HYGIEIA est disponible dans la publication HYGIEIA
Publications
Abstract
More than two years on, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc around the world and has battle-tested the pandemic-situation responses of all major global governments. Two key areas of investigation that are still unclear are: the molecular mechanisms that lead to heterogenic patient outcomes, and the causes of Post COVID condition (AKA Long-COVID). In this paper, we introduce the HYGIEIA project, designed to respond to the enormous challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic through a multi-omic approach supported by network medicine. It is hoped that in addition to investigating COVID-19, the logistics deployed within this project will be applicable to other infectious agents, pandemic-type situations, and also other complex, non-infectious diseases. Here, we first look at previous research into COVID-19 in the context of the proteome, metabolome, transcriptome, microbiome, host genome, and viral genome. We then discuss a proposed methodology for a large-scale multi-omic longitudinal study to investigate the aforementioned biological strata through high-throughput sequencing (HTS) and mass-spectrometry (MS) technologies. Lastly, we discuss how a network medicine approach can be used to analyze the data and make meaningful discoveries, with the final aim being the translation of these discoveries into the clinics to improve patient care.
Ward B, Yombi JC, Balligand JL, Cani PD, Collet JF, de Greef J, Dewulf JP, Gatto L, Haufroid V, Jodogne S, Kabamba B, Pyr Dit Ruys S, Vertommen D, Elens L, Belkhir L. HYGIEIA: HYpothesizing the Genesis of Infectious Diseases and Epidemics through an Integrated Systems Biology Approach. Viruses. 2022 Jun 23;14(7):1373. doi: 10.3390/v14071373. PMID: 35891354; PMCID: PMC9318602.