Leveraging systems biology for predicting modulators of inflammation in patients with COVID-19

Dysregulations in the inflammatory response of the body to pathogens could progress toward a hyperinflammatory condition amplified by positive feedback loops and associated with increased severity and mortality. Hence, there is a need for identifying therapeutic targets to modulate this pathological immune response. Here, we propose a single cell-based computational methodology for predicting proteins to modulate the dysregulated inflammatory response based on the reconstruction and analysis of functional cell-cell communication networks of physiological and pathological conditions. We validated the proposed method in 12 human disease datasets and performed an in-depth study of patients with mild and severe symptomatology of the coronavirus disease 2019 for predicting novel therapeutic targets. As a result, we identified the extracellular matrix protein versican and Toll-like receptor 2 as potential targets for modulating the inflammatory response. In summary, the proposed method can be of great utility in systematically identifying therapeutic targets for modulating pathological immune responses.