Finding a solution for long COVID, one cell type at a time

A 2022 , an associate professor-clinical in the Department of Biomedical Informatics and Center for Biostatistics at Ohio State, is a team scientist in a broad range of biomedical research areas, mainly in cancer and microbial infection and immunity. With expertise ranging from experimental design to biostatistics and bioinformatics data analysis and modeling, she will oversee all bioinformatic and statistical analysis in the project grant.

Amer noted that program grants are very competitive, and successful applications are those that prove the PIs have a track record of working together on significant research – an indication that the team will work together efficiently for the duration of the grant.

“Being at Ohio State, we have people specializing in everything we needed for this grant, and we provided a huge list of publications going back 10 years showing we have continuously worked together and published together on cutting-edge science,” she said. “And the NIH was convinced that this group is the one that can do this.”

Grant title: “Role of the non-canonical inflammasome in SARS-CoV-2-mediated pathology and coagulopathy.”

• Project 1: Role of caspase 11 in SARS-CoV-2-induced lung pathologies and long-term immune protection (Project Leader: Prosper Boyaka; Co-Investigators: Estelle Cormet-Boyaka, Jacob Yount)
• Project 2: Caspase 11-dependent immunothrombosis and neuroinflammation during SARS-CoV-2 infection (Project Leader: Amal Amer; Co-Investigators: Stephanie Seveau, Andrea Tedeschi)
• Project 3: Caspase 11-dependent RNA modifications and their Role in Multi-Organ Pathologies (Project Leader: Jianrong Li; Co-Investigators: Mark Peeples, Chuan He)
• Administrative Core (Core Leader: Amal Amer; Co-Investigators: Estelle Cormet-Boyaka, Jianrong Li)
• Biostatistics and Bioinformatics Core (Core Leader: Xiaoli Zhang; Co-Investigators: Maciej Pietrzak, Amy Webb)
• Biological Reagents and Infection Core (Core Leader: Jianrong Li; Co-Investigator: Mark Peeples)
• Cell Derivation and Maintenance Core (Core Leader: Estelle Cormet-Boyaka; Co-Investigator: Santiago Partida-Sanchez)