Healthcare non profit Global Down Syndrome Foundation (GLOBAL) said on Friday that the researchers at the Linda Crnic Institute for Down Syndrome at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus (Crnic Institute) have received three grants to study the relation between the hyper inflammatory state of the immune system in people with Down syndrome and complications in SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Additionally, the Foundation said it received the three grants, valued at USD1m, from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Fast Grants. The grants follow Crnic Institute's breakthrough discovery that people with Down syndrome are affected by chronic autoinflammation and the patients with COVID-19 who have severe symptoms or die have hyperactive inflammation similar to people with Down syndrome.

Under the research, Crnic Institute aim develop tailored COVID-19 prevention, diagnosis and treatment for individuals with Down syndrome in both people and mouse models. The preliminary data suggests people with Down syndrome are more likely to be hospitalized and die at a younger age due to COVID-19 compared to the typical population.

In conjunction, the Crnic Institute is testing Xeljanz to treat autoimmune and hyper inflammatory skin diseases in people with Down syndrome. It will create an unprecedented body of knowledge by aggregating information and samples from individuals with Down syndrome diagnosed with COVID-19 through its Human Trisome Project data set and the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C). The researchers will test the ability of JAK inhibitors to normalize the hyper inflammatory state in a mouse model of Down syndrome.