Dr. D. Lansing Taylor (Drug Discovery Institute and Dept of Computational and Systems Biology),  along with Dr. Vijay Yechoor (Department of Medicine and Director, Diabetes and Beta Cell Biology Center) have received a one year funded initiative to study the effects of COVID-19 on the Diabetic Liver.  This initiative is a funded supplement to the grant: “Human Microphysiology Systems Disease Model of Type 2 Diabetes Starting with Liver and pancreatic Islets”

The COVID-19 pandemic requires a rapid response to find therapeutic strategies for T2D patients who have a much higher mortality than non-diabetics. Therefore, there is a need for therapeutic strategies to mitigate the cytokine storm syndrome (CSS) and thethrombotic micro-angiopathy (TMA)that are prevalentin these patients. Our normal-fasting and T2D vLAMPS models developed during the UG3 period of the parent funding are ready to be applied to this challenge when human macrophages are infected with SARS-CoV-2 and flowed into the vascular channel of the vLAMPS.