MIT scientists find a way to protect lungs of Coronavirus patients from ‘cytokine storms’

• A team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed special proteins to help save the lungs of Coronavirus patients.
  
• The immune system’s overreaction can cause a ‘cytokine storm’ that can be so harmful the lungs that it could lead to death.
  
• The scientists have been working on the solution for nearly 10 years, far before the coronavirus pandemic came along.
  
• The QTY code makes the proteins in amino acids hydrophilic instead of hydrophobic.
  

Just because humans don’t have natural immunity against Coronavirus doesn’t mean that the body doesn’t try to fight back. One of the ways it can do this is by launching a ‘cytokine storm’ — a burst of immune overreaction.

As the body fights against the virus in this manner, the excess protein also damages the lung leading to death.

A team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed special proteins based on the structure of antibodies to soak up the excess cytokines — that could potentially save lives.

“The idea is that they can be injected into the body and bind the excessive cytokines as generated by the cytokine storm, removing the excessive cytokines and alleviating the system from the infection,” said Rui Qing, one the senior authors of the study published in the Quarterly Review of Biophysics (QRB) Discovery.

The next step will be to test their proteins in humans cells and in animal models of cytokine release to mimic what happens during coronavirus infection, according to David Jin, CEO and President of Avalon Globo Care — a biotech and healthcare services company listed on the New York Stock Exchange — who is also one of the authors of the paper.

The solution was 10 years in the making
Shuguang Zhang, another senior author of the paper and a principal research scientist in the MIT Media Lab’s Laboratory of Molecular Architecture, began working on blocking the effects of cytokine storm using a modified version of membrane-embedded proteins 10 years ago.

When studies started to suggest that COVID-19 was inducing cytokine storms in a few patients, the researchers realised that their custom-made receptor proteins might be able to help.

“As it turns out, our research initiated in April 2019 is directly relevant to the treatment of COVID-19 infected patients,” said Zhang.

Making proteins water friendly
The process calls for replacing some of the hydrophobic amino acids with others hydrophobic amino acids which have a similar structure. That means instead of repelling water molecules, they will now be able to form an ionic or hydrogen bond with water molecules. The scientists call this the QTY code.

The method can modify the hydrophobic regions of the proteins by making them soluble in water. Ordinarily, these proteins have proven difficult to study because once they’re extracted from a cell’s membrane — they are unstable.

Being hydrophilic also means that it’s easier for the proteins to travel through the human bloodstream. Else, the hydrophobic versions of the proteins would likely stick to cells that they encounter.

The scientists also attached antibody segments called ‘the Fc region’ to their receptor proteins. This is the tail region of an antibody that interacts with cell surface receptors. It allows the antibodies to activate the immune system.

To address cytokine storms, adding the Fc region further stabilises the proteins in the bloodstream and makes them less likely to be attacked by the immune system that they’re trying to protect.

“Obviously this approach will need further animal studies, and potentially human clinical studies,” said Jin from Avalon Globo Care.

“But we have confidence that this discovery will contribute to clinical applications to address viral diseases that involve cytokine storms,” he added.


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