The COVID-19 Processing Unit (CPU)

The COVID-19 Processing Unit (CPU) was launched in March 2020 to facilitate SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 research at the University of Pennsylvania. The CPU integrates immune profiling of peripheral blood, plasma, and serum with extensive clinical information to study the immune responses in patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection, with implications for therapeutic interventions in COVID-19 disease.

Sharon Adamski is currently managing the day-to-day activities of the CPU.

Early on in the pandemic Amy Baxter helped establish and manage the CPU, and now works in collaboration with many members of the lab to help direct our ongoing COVID research. She is particularly interested in the antigen-specificity of responses to SARS-CoV2. 

Kurt D’Andrea is involved in the day-to-day running of the CPU, and manages our extensive bank of sample

Divij Mathew is studying the antigen-specific response in patients with COVID-19 through high-dimensional profiling of peripheral blood and serum and in vitro cell assays.

Alex Huang is studying the impact of cancer and cancer therapies on COVID-19. His team, including Nick Han and Justin Kim, are integral to the sample processing arm of the CPU.

Derek Oldridge, Jonathan Belman, and Dana Pueschl, are evaluating tissue-based immune responses by multiplexed imaging in COVID-19 autopsy samples.

Jonathan Belman is using high dimensional profiling of COVID-19 autopsy tissue (CODEX and TCR/BCR sequencing) to compare tissue-resident immune cells to those found in peripheral blood.  

Cecile Alanio is studying the intersection of COVID and CMV. She is currently evaluating the frequency of CMV seropositivity in COVID-19 positive donors, as compared to recovered and healthy donors, as well as donors with unrelated ARDS.

Sokratis Apostolidis is focusing on two distinct, but complementary research areas. The first pertains to the role of thromboinflammation and platelet activation in the setting of SARS-CoV2 infection. He aims to understand the underlying mechanism of the thrombotic complications seen in patients with COVID19. The second area aims to assess the autoimmune manifestations triggered by COVID19. Through deep immune and autoantibody profiling, our goal is to understand the kinetics and breadth of post-viral loss of tolerance in the setting of COVID19 infection.

Laura Vella is leading research efforts to characterize immunologic profiles in pediatric COVID-19, MIS-C, and recovered donors.