System-wide hematopoietic and immune signaling aberrations in COVID-19 revealed by deep proteome and phosphoproteome analysis

Kaneko, T.; Esmail, S.; Voss, C.; Martin, C. M.; Slessarev, M.; Hovey, O.; Liu, X.; Ye, M.; Kim, S.; Fraser, D.; Li, S. S.

The COVID-19 pandemic, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, has become a global crisis. To gain systems-level insights into its pathogenesis, we compared the blood proteome and phosphoproteome of ICU patients with or without SARS-CoV-2 infection, and healthy control subjects by quantitative mass spectrometry. We find that COVID-19 is marked with hyperactive T cell and B cell signaling, compromised innate immune response, and dysregulated inflammation, coagulation, metabolism, RNA splicing, transcription and translation pathways. SARS-CoV-2 infection causes global reprogramming of the kinome and kinase-substrate network, resulting in defective antiviral defense via the CK2-OPN-IL-12/IFN-I axis, lymphocyte cell death via aberrant JAK/STAT signaling, and inactivation of innate immune cells via inhibitory SIRPA, SIGLEC and SLAM family receptor signaling. Our work identifies CK2, SYK, JAK3, TYK2 and IL-12 as potential targets for immunomodulatory treatment of severe COVID-19 and provides a valuable approach and resource for deciphering the mechanism of pathogen-host interactions.