Sci Immunol: Virus-specific T cells produced in patients with COVID19

, July 2, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --- A new study of T-cells in 10 PATIENTs treated with COVID-19 in intensive care shows that patients with severe respiratory symptoms due to SARS-CoV-2 infection can quickly produce T-cells that attack the virus and increase the production of this specific T-cell over time, the researchers found that two of the 10 healthy individuals who had not been exposed to the virus in advance carried SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells, which may indicate that these T-cells can cross-react with the new coronavirus due to past infectionsFor example, infection with a coronavirus that causes symptoms of the common coldin general, the new data solve the problem of whether SARS-CoV-2-specific T-cell responses change over time with the severity of the disease, and help answer whether patients with more severe symptoms can produce protective viral-specific T-cells without(Photo:
the study also provides new clues about the cells that cause an over-immune response, including a life-threatening "cell factor storm", which may also help with vaccine designin the study, Daniela Weiskopf and colleagues sampled severe patients who entered the ICU for treatment with COVID-19, extracted blood cells from 10 patients every other week and exposed them to a known "library" of SARS-CoV-2 epitopes - a technique designed to capture a large number of viral reactive T-cell subgroupsthey found SARS-CoV-2-specific CD4 plus auxiliary T cells in all 10 patients, CD8 plus "lethal" T cells in 8 out of 10 patients, and characterized the specific proactive cytokines produced by these cellsthe strongest T-cell reactions directly against the virus's sting (S) protein, which is consistent with previous results, and which has shown that S proteins are promising targets for inducing viral-specific T-cellsIn addition, screening of all patients at 0, 7 and 14 days after the study was included found to show that SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells appear relatively early in the course of infection and increase over timeusing the same T-cell stimulation technique in an age-matched healthy control group, the researchers found SARS-CoV-2-reactive T cells in 2 out of 10 peopleBased on their findings, the authors point to promising areas for future work, including investigating how pre-existing SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells in health controls are associated with protection against COVID-19 disease, and identifying T-cell subgroups associated with cytokine storms(Bio Valley Bioon.com)source:COVID-19 patients patients patients patients patiently virus-projecting T cells, show studyoriginal origin:Weiskopf, D., et al (2020) Phenotype and Kinetics to SARS-Co-
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Science.
doi.org/10.1126/sciimmunol.abd2071.