This summer, the Instituto de Medicina Molecular (IMM) Joao Lobo Antunes officially joined the ENDVOC project. In an interview, group leader Luis Graca explains how this partnership will allow to study the impact of COVID-19 variants among immunocompromised patients.
This summer, the Instituto de Medicina Molecular (IMM) Joao Lobo Antunes officially joined the END-VOC project. This collaboration provides access to an extensive national registry database, allowing researchers to study underrepresented groups, such as immunocompromised patients, which is difficult to do in smaller cohorts.
In this interview, Luis Graca, from the IMM, discusses the significance of this partenership for the ENDVOC project and the unique insights his team brings to the fight against COVID-19.
Can you briefly explain who you are and what you do?
I am a Professor of Immunology at the University of Lisbon Medical School and lead a research group at the Instituto de Medicina Molecular, which is associated with the medical school. Our focus is on antibody responses (also known as humoral immune responses), particularly those triggered by vaccination.
What types of cohorts have you established during the COVID-19 pandemic?
During the pandemic, we worked with the Portuguese national registries, in collaboration with the national health authority (the General Directorate of Health), to study the protection afforded by vaccination and hybrid immunity (vaccination and infection) against new COVID-19 infections and severe outcomes (namely, hospitalization and death).
Our institute has biobanked serial samples of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from COVID-19 patients treated in the hospital, including those who developed severe disease requiring intensive care, as well as those with milder disease.
What makes your cohort unique and how does it contribute to END-VOC’s goal?
The strength of working with national registries lies in their size. The Portuguese registry comprises a population of over 10 million people, allowing us to study subgroups that are not big enough in smaller cohorts. This is the case of immunocompromised individuals, who are generally underrepresented in most cohort studies because of the diversity of conditions that compromise immunity and the small number of individuals with those different conditions.
The Portuguese population is also unique in some other characteristics, namely a vaccination coverage among the highest within the European region, with over 90% of the population aged 12 and above having completed their primary vaccination course.
How will your team benefit from being part of the END-VOC project?
Collaborations always allow us to achieve more. By accessing cohorts from other countries, we can better investigate specific groups of immunocompromised patients who are otherwise hard to study due to the rarity of their conditions. Additionally, we can track how their risk of severe outcomes changes as the virus evolved to new variants.
Interview by Adelaida Sarukhan
Photo: Egas Moniz Building, IMM, by Ivendrell
