The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), represents a world-wide public health crisis, challenging the capacities of health-care systems worldwide. The Precision Immunology Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine (PrIISM) is located within the Mount Sinai Health System in New York, a city that is disproportionately affected by COVID-19.

Starting in February 2020, as the pandemic began to emerge in the US, the PrIISM faculty, led by the institute’s Director, Dr. Miriam Merad, immediately began dedicated scientific studies aimed at finding better ways to treat COVID-19 and reduce the terrible mortality rate of the disease. This includes comprehensive studies of the blood, cells, and tissues of infected patients and work towards novel or repurposed therapies and vaccines to treat COVID-19. The PrIISM team is also working to understand why some people, including some children, develop more severe COVID, how to treat people better to reduce disease severity, and to identify the factors that cause long COVID, in which some individuals retain disease symptoms for months after initial infection. Some of the efforts and accomplishments of PrIISM’s COVID efforts are listed below.

PrIISM is thankful for the support for our COVID effort from the Mount Sinai Health System, the NIH and other funding organizations including the FastGrant initiative, and a generous group of donor citizens.