Nat Med: The secret to the success of the new crown vaccine - the immune response to SARS-CoV-2 stingprotein!

July 16, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Scientists have discovered how a key component of the immune system responds to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, which is important for the validation of future vaccine candidatesThe coronavirus particles have a coronal structure of a spike-like protein that allows the virus to attach and enter human cellsThe stingprotein is essential in induction neutralizing antibodies to prevent reinfectionNeutralizing antibodies not only bind to the viral antist protein, but also prevent it from adhering to and entering human cellsThe production of a strong neutral antibody response is an important target of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccineAs most COVID-19 vaccines are currently the target of human clinical trials, a team from the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunisation at the University of Melbourne in Australia is eager to study how the immune system, especially B-cells and T-cells, responds to stingsPhoto Source: Cells are responsible for producing antibodies that recognize SARS-CoV-2, and T cells play an important role in supporting the development of B-cell responsesDr Jennifer Juno, a postdoctoral researcher at the Doherty Institute at the University of Melbourne, said they studied people recovering from COVID-19, most of whom had mild or no symptoms because the immune response was similar to the immune response that vaccines might triggerThe researchers found that those who showed strong neutralizing antibody activity also had strong B-cell responses, but most surprisingly they also found that a specific subgroup of T-cells, T-follicular-assisted cells, was an important predictor of an effective immune responseResearchers have previously demonstrated through influenza studies that B cells are key to an effective immune response to influenza, and they know that T follicle-assisted cells specifically help B cells make antibodiesThe team hopes their "immune parameters", published recently in Nature Medicine, can be applied to clinical vaccine trials to assess whether the vaccine causes strong or weak neutralizing antibody responsesDr Juno explained: "Now we know how the immune system responds to the stingprotein, and we have these biomarkers, or can predict which factors trigger a good or bad immune response to COVID-19." We can study the candidate vaccine and see what provides the best protectionIn addition to COVID-19, the researchers also studied circulating coronaviruses that cause the common cold to try to understand what predicted neutralized responses to SARS-CoV-2These findings are consistent with descriptions of the immune response of other people recovering from COVID-19Source: Immune response to COVID-19's spike protein - the secret to vaccine a vaccine? Jennifer AJuno et aland circulating follif i'r t-cell responses in recovered patients with COVID-19, Nature Medicine (2020) DOI: 10.1038/s41591-020-0995-0.