UCSF Doctor Builds Tissue Bank to Cure Long COVID

Millions of people worldwide still battle long COVID every day, but a doctor in San Francisco is building something that could finally change that.

Dr. Michael Peluso at the University of California, San Francisco, saw what others missed in April 2020. While hospitals focused on keeping COVID patients alive, he wondered what would happen to people after they recovered.

Within weeks of launching his research program, people started reaching out with the same troubling story. They'd survived COVID but still felt terrible weeks later.

Six years later, his Long-term Impact of Infection with Novel Coronavirus (LIINC) program has enrolled over 1,800 people and built something no other long COVID research program has: a comprehensive tissue bank. His team collects gut biopsies, lymph node samples, spinal fluid, bone marrow, and other tissues from long COVID patients to understand what's happening inside their bodies.

The discoveries have been eye-opening. Some patients are so disabled they need wheelchairs or lost their jobs due to severe brain fog, yet their blood tests look almost normal. This led Dr. Peluso to a crucial insight: long COVID appears to be a tissue-based disease, hiding in organs rather than showing up in standard blood work.

His background studying HIV prepared him perfectly for this challenge. Both viruses can disrupt the immune system long-term, and Dr. Peluso applies the same persistence-focused approach to long COVID that researchers use for HIV.

The tissue bank has already shared over 20,000 biospecimens with dozens of research labs studying long COVID. This collaboration means scientists everywhere can make more informed decisions about clinical trials and potential treatments.

The Ripple Effect

Dr. Peluso's work is creating a foundation for long COVID research worldwide. By sharing specimens and findings openly, he's accelerating the path to treatments for a condition many doctors still struggle to understand.

His team is now developing a second component: accepting tissue samples from patients nationwide who undergo routine clinical procedures. This expansion could dramatically increase the research pool and speed up the discovery of effective treatments.

For people living with long COVID who've faced skepticism about whether their condition even exists, Dr. Peluso's rigorous scientific approach offers something powerful: validation and hope that answers are coming.