After two years of pandemic, COVID-19 research is bearing fruit

When the public health crisis broke out, most scientists were focused on finding antibodies to neutralize the virus, neglecting the other component of the immune system, the T cells that attack infected cells. At the time, few foresaw how many mutations SARS-CoV-2 would undergo and their effects on white blood cells.

The research team at the Caron Lab, which works to detect new forms of tumour-specific antigens in order to develop cancer vaccines, did see the mutations coming. “We knew the virus would mutate,” said Étienne Caron, assistant professor in the Department of Pathology and Cell Biology at UdeM’s Faculty of Medicine and an expert on the adaptive immune system.

After a call from David Hamelin, a graduate student in Bioinformatics at the University of Victoria, the lab’s team decided to set up a major research project called “Analysis of the mutational landscape of SARS-CoV-2 variants: implications for T-cell-epitope escape and vaccine resistance.”

“David wanted to combine his experience in mass spectrometry with his passion for computer science to study COVID mutations,” said Caron. “Since the work involved considerable genomic sequencing, I suggested he contact Julie Hussin, director of the MHI-OMICS bioinformatics group at the Montreal Heart Institute. He set up the link between Julie, an expert in population genomics, and me, an expert in cancer immunotherapy. From this improbable combination, the project was born.”

Dr. Quoc Dinh Nguyen, assistant clinical professor in the Department of Medicine at UdeM and internist/geriatrician at the CHUM hospital, dropped everything to serve the community when he was appointed to head the Quebec Ministry of Health and Social Services’ expert panel on COVID-19 measures for seniors. “I felt strongly that studying this population was the right thing to do,” he said. “The pandemic highlighted the extreme vulnerability of the elderly, who had a very high mortality rate during the first wave.”

To build a community of CHSLD physicians and make their voices heard, he teamed up with fellow physicians Philippe Desmarais, assistant clinical professor in the Department of Medicine and internist/geriatrician at the CHUM, Pierrette Gaudreau, full professor in the Department of Medicine and director of the Neuroendocrinology of Aging Laboratory at the CHUM Research Centre, Marie-France Forget, future geriatrician at the CHUM, and Olivier Beauchet, full professor in the Department of Medicine, physician at the Montreal University Institute of Geriatrics (IUGM) and lab director at the IUGM Research Centre.

And to have a presence on the ground, the team established a collaboration with Sophie Zhang and Catherine Richer, assistant heads of housing at the Montreal Centre-Sud district health authority. “In talking with stakeholders, we realized how limited and powerless health care professionals felt in long-term care homes,” said Nguyen. “There is a real need to establish an infrastructure and a network.”

Two-thirds of Quebec seniors report being inactive and sedentary. With the isolation and restrictions caused by COVID-19, the problem of deconditioning resulting from lack of physical activity has worsened dramatically, leading to loss of autonomy.

Since exercise is an effective way to prevent physical and mental decline in elderly people, Mylène Aubertin-Leheudre, associate professor at UdeM’s School of Kinesiology and Physical Activity Sciences and associate director of clinical research at the IUGM Research Centre, wondered why it is not prescribed for people suffering from deconditioning.

She discussed the idea with geriatrician Marie-Jeanne Kergoat, professor in UdeM’s Faculty of Medicine, clinical researcher and director of the IUGM’s outpatient cognition clinic. Kergoat agreed wholeheartedly. The impediment was lack of knowledge, tools and professional resources to implement the concept.

Aubertin-Leheudre felt this problem was fixable. “With Dr. Kergoat, CHUM geriatrician Dr. Thien Tuong Minh Vu, and occupational therapist Nathalie Veillette from the School of Rehabilitation, we set up a project to develop an interactive tool to get seniors moving safely,” she said. “They and their caregivers are able to watch the physical activity sessions and follow the program online. The project is called ‘Preventing deconditioning in frail seniors followed at the Ambulatory Geriatric Centre: implementation of a distance adapted physical activity program via the PACE tool’.”