Rs 10.3 million grant approved for COVID-19 research project

LAHORE: The Higher Education Commission (HEC) has approved Rs 10.3 million research grant for a project of the University of Health Sciences (UHS) working on the immunological, viral and genetic basis of coronavirus in local patients.

According to a statement, the approval of Rs 10.3 million is a part of the Rapid Research Grant Initiative, started by HEC under a partnership with the World Bank.

The principal investigator of the project, Dr. Shah Jahan said that besides other things, his team aims to find out whether genetics act as a determining cause of the severity of the virus symptoms on a human body.

Jahan further said that several factors were involved in the pathogenesis of COVID-19  in Pakistan, including host immunity and genetic response to viral infection.

Prof Nadeem Afzal, University of Health Sciences Immunology Department head who is one of the investigators, elaborated that the immune system could react to viruses, partially as of specific genes that supported cells spot unfamiliar bugs when they entered the body.

The genes, known as human leukocyte antigen (HLA) genes, enclosed instructions to build proteins that bind to bits of a pathogen; those proteins serve as warning flags to alert immune cells.

The immune cells once trained to recognize these bits, jumpstart the process of building antibodies to target and destroy the invasive germ.

“If someone was formerly exposed to a COVID-19 and had the right HLA types then it is theoretically probable that they could also generate an earlier immune response against the new Sars-CoV-2,” Afzal added.