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FIMM – Building a Bridge from Discovery to Medicine COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative

In March 2020, geneticists around the world united to
answer a pressing and complex question: which genetic
factors determine why some COVID-19 patients develop
severe, life-threatening disease requiring hospitalisation
while others escape with mild symptoms or none at all?

This global effort, called the COVID-19 Host Genetics Initia-
tive, was founded by FIMM-EMBL Group Leader Andrea
Ganna and the Director of FIMM, Mark Daly. The initiative
has since grown to be one of the most extensive collabo-
rations in human genetics, including more than 3,300
researchers and 60 study cohorts from all over the world.

The consortium has pooled clinical and genetic data from
nearly 126,000 patients who tested positive for the virus,
and over 2.5 million controls across numerous biobanks,
clinical studies, and direct-to-consumer genetic compa-
nies. Because of the large amount of data, the consortium
was able to produce statistically-robust analyses far more
quickly, and from a greater diversity of populations, than
any individual group could have done on its own.

The genetic association studies performed by the consor-
tium have delivered many new genetic signals underlying
COVID-19 severity and infection susceptibility. A May 2022
publication from the COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative
reports 16 genetic areas that affect the risk of COVID-19
hospitalisation and seven that clearly influence suscepti-
bility to SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Finding host genetic factors for infection susceptibility
and disease severity is important because it leads to better
understanding of the viral infection, the pathophysiologi-
cal changes that occur due to the disease and the discov-
ery of potential drug targets. Further analyses are ongoing
to uncover why some individuals who have contracted
COVID-19 experience long-term symptoms that may result
in a considerable health burden in the years to come.

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