Due to increasing demand for the validation of staff performing white blood cell isolation from whole blood, laboratory operators based in the University of Southampton and University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust must be certified by conducting the activities described in specific standard operating procedures (SOPs) for the separation of white blood cells from whole blood. In order to validate the laboratory operators for the purpose of certification, blood from healthy volunteers is required. The isolated white cells will undergo analysis to determine how many cells were isolated, if the cells are dead or alive and if the cells have been excessively stimulated during the procedure or not. If there are any cells left over after the analysis has been done, they will be destroyed. If the quantity and quality of the white blood cells falls within expected parameters, the operators performing the procedure will be validated and certified for that particular SOP.

SARS-CoV2 is the virus which causes COVID-19, the form of coronavirus which is now a global pandemic. The gene ACE2 is involved when SARS-CoV2 infection occurs and the eye is an important possible place of entry for the virus to get into the body. It is thought that the virus enters the eye through ACE2, but this remains unclear. We will look at gene expression in eye tissue to identify whether ACE2 is important in the eye and generate a picture of biomarkers of the eye which may predict disease severity. This will help in understanding the first steps in the mechanism of infection and potential targets for therapies. We will be using excess surgical tissue from the eyes of non COVID-19 patients undergoing surgery for other reasons.

This study is part of a collaborative UK immunology network to understand how the immune system can protect against COVID-19 and develop relevant tests to help identify patients with better or worse outcomes following exposure to SARS-CoV-2. Our role is to investigate the part of the early warning system of the immune system: “the innate immune system”, and its response to COVID-19. We wish to study this part of the immune system in detail because other studies have overlooked this important part of the immune response to COVID-19. The cells of the innate immune system are present in a primed “ready-to-go” state in most individuals. However, it is possible that other infections, and even vaccines such as BCG, can give these cells a heightened state of readiness called “trained immunological memory”. We wish to test if individuals who have better outcomes from COVID-19, or are protected from infection have stronger innate immune systems with more cells in this “trained” state than those who have worse outcomes. Similarly, we wish to study if the innate immune system can determine which individuals will have more severe outcomes, such as respiratory failure. We will study this using assays of immune cell function and by phenotyping these cells at a molecular level. In this way, we will learn how the innate immune system responds to SARS-CoV-2 and investigate some of the molecular mechanisms involved. It is hoped that information from this work can inform useful immunological tests that will help to decide which patients are protected from infection and which patients may develop severe COVID-19 disease.