Updated project metadata.
The COVID-19 pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 has reached 5.5 million deaths worldwide, causing a huge impact globally. This highly contagious viral infection produces a severe acute respiratory syndrome that includes cough, mucus, fever and pneumonia. Likewise, many hospitalized patients develop severe pneumonia associated with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), besides an exacerbated and uncontrolled systemic inflammation which in some cases induce lethal cytokine storm. Although vaccines have clearly had a beneficial effect on disease development, there is still a high percentage of patients who develop pathology related to ineffective immune system response. Therefore, a thorough understanding of the modulatory mechanisms that regulate the response to SARS-CoV-2 is crucial to find effective therapeutic alternatives. Previous studies describe the relevance of Neddylation in immune system activation further its implications in viral infection. In this context, the present study postulates Neddylation, a reversible ubiquitin-like post-translational modification of proteins and controls their stability, localization and activity, as a key regulator in the immune response against SARS-CoV-2. For the first time, we describe an increase of serum global neddylation levels of COVID-19 patients particularly associated in the early response of the infection. In addition, the results showed that overactivation of neddylation control activation, proliferation, and response of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) derived from COVID-19 patients. Inhibition of neddylation and subsequent avoidance of activation of PBMCs, which reduces cytokine production and proteome modulation, may therefore be a critical mechanism and an efficient therapeutic approach to immunomodulate COVID -19 patients and avoid the much-feared cytokine storm.