NIH https://www.nih.gov has awarded eight research grants for up to $20 million over four years to help identify children at high risk for Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome In children (MIS-C), a rare and severe after effect of COVID-19.
The awards are part of the Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) Radical (RADx-rad) https://www.nih.gov/radx program that supports new non-traditional approaches and reimagined uses of existing tools to address gaps in COVID-19 testing and surveillance.
In most cases, children exposed to or infected with SARS-COV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, will not develop any symptoms or will develop only a mild illness. However, some children become seriously ill at the time of infection. Others who initially have no symptoms may go on to develop MIS-C, a severe, sometimes fatal condition marked by inflammation of one or more organs, which can include the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes, and gastrointestinal tract.
The awards will evaluate genes, immune system proteins, other biomarkers, and examine how the virus interacts with the body and how the immune system responds to it. The studies will rely on artificial intelligence and machine learning to interpret the data they acquire, in order to understand the risk factors underlying the severity of COVID and MIS-C.
The awardees include: University of California, San Diego, Johns Hopkins University, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, Hartford, University of California, San Francisco and Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Brunswick, NJ.