Even the sickest COVID-19 patients produce T cells that help fight the virus

Researchers at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) and Erasmus University Medical Center (Erasmus MC) shows that even the sickest COVID-19 patients produce T cells that help fight the virus.

Daily Current Affairs Quiz 2020

Key-Points

The study offers further evidence that a COVID-19 vaccine will need to elicit T cells to work alongside antibodies.

The research, published June 26, 2020 in Science Immunology, also reveals that both Dutch and American patients have similar responses to the virus.

For the study, the researchers followed ten COVID-19 patients with the most severe disease symptoms.

The virus uses the spike protein to enter host cells, and many vaccine efforts around the world are aimed at getting the immune system to recognize and attack this protein.

The new study offers further evidence that the spike protein is a promising target and confirms that the immune system can also mount strong responses to other targets on the virus.

What are T cells?

T cells are white blood cell that is an essential part of the immune system.

T cells are one of two primary types of lymphocytes and B cells being the second type that determine the specificity of immune response to antigens (foreign substances) in the body.

T cells originate in the bone marrow and mature in the thymus.

In the thymus, T cells multiply and differentiate into helper, regulatory, or cytotoxic T cells or become memory T cells.