We focus on discovery of molecular biomarkers of COVID-19 with respect to internal and external exposure factors called exposomes, that can provide early warning for COVID-19 susceptibility and severity, as well as targets for therapeutic modalities. Our approach:
- Biochemical profiling of patients for molecules such as, inflammatory markers, cytokines, proteins, metabolites and toxins using massspectrometry
- Clinical evaluation of the patients to quantify severity levels
- Derivation of datadriven biomarker-suggestive correlation between the molecules and severity quantization
- Integration into EMR Hospital Information Systems for inclusion into standardized clinical patient consultation protocols
- Building capacity in India for robotic arm mass-spectrometry for ultra-high throughput testing of Bio-Monitoring microsamples. The most impactful outcomes are novel therapeutic approaches to safeguard patients from advancing to severity, and instead, en-route them to sound recovery.
UC San Diego has built a robotic high throughput mass-spec for exposome determination. Amrita will do sequential and concurrent investigation of patient samples and vitals (through wearables and remote monitoring), with overall objective of identifying suspected Early Warning Severity Biomarkers (EWSB) in the exposome. Stanford will develop machine learning algorithms for confirming or controverting EWSB suspects and track clinical trajectory of each patient.
India Principal Investigators
Dr. Shantikumar Nair
Dean of Research, Director
Amrita Center for Nanosciences
Dr. Ekanath Rangan
Physician Scientist
Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences & Research [AIMS]
US Principal Investigators
Dr. Mohit Jain
University of California, San Diego (UCSD)
Dr. Ramesh Rao
University of California, San Diego(UCSD)
Dr. Shriram Nallamshetty
Stanford University
