HEALTH UPDATE
THE PANDEMIC OF THE CENTURY
When are we going to return to normalcy ?
Winterskyx
"Scientists and public health experts have been so poor at communicating consumable info to the layman and prone to politics, which I fully understand in 2020 when anti-science is being politicized, but do not resort to fear. We 100% will have an effective vaccine either early on, but more likely into next year, one that we have no idea will be a dose and a booster or a yearly shot. One that lessens the severity and of this virus and elicits neutralizing antibodies (it looks like most vaccines are doing this) AND CD8+ T-cell immunity ultimately will be the closest thing to, if not a silver bullet. I predict in my giant crystal ball of extensive study that this virus literally works like any other coronavirus and will join the hundreds of diseases in circulation with very sporadic outbreaks that can be maintained. More than anything, normalcy will return by next year, but what I hope everyone learns from this pandemic is that scientists need to be honest with themselves and find a way to communicate good info, not the media pulling random abstracts from papers, not this fear-mongering propaganda, just good easy to understand info"
Robust T cell immunity in convalescent individuals with asymptomatic or mild COVID-19
Published by Elsevier Inc.
SARS-CoV-2-specific memory T cells will likely prove critical for long-term immune protection against COVID-19. We here systematically mapped the functional and phenotypic landscape of SARS-CoV-2-specific T cell responses in unexposed individuals, exposed family members, and individuals with acute or convalescent COVID-19. Acute phase SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells displayed a highly activated cytotoxic phenotype that correlated with various clinical markers of disease severity, whereas convalescent phase SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells were polyfunctional and displayed a stem-like memory phenotype. Importantly, SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells were detectable in antibody-seronegative exposed family members and convalescent individuals with a history of asymptomatic and mild COVID-19. Our collective dataset shows that SARS-CoV-2 elicits robust, broad and highly functional memory T cell responses, suggesting that natural exposure or infection may prevent recurrent episodes of severe COVID-19.
Development of a safe and effective SARS-CoV-2 vaccine is a public health priority. We designed subunit vaccine candidates using self-assembling ferritin nanoparticles displaying one of two multimerized SARS-CoV-2 spikes: full-length ectodomain (S-Fer) or a C-terminal 70 amino acid deletion (SΔC-Fer). Ferritin is an attractive nanoparticle platform for production of vaccines and ferritin-based vaccines have been investigated in humans in two separate clinical trials. We confirmed proper folding and antigenicity of spike on the surface of ferritin by cryo-EM and binding to conformation-specific monoclonal antibodies. After a single immunization of mice with either of the two spike ferritin particles, a lentiviral SARS-CoV-2 pseudovirus assay revealed mean neutralizing antibody titers at least 2-fold greater than those in convalescent plasma from COVID-19 patients. Additionally, a single dose of SΔC-Fer elicited significantly higher neutralizing responses as compared to immunization with the spike receptor binding domain (RBD) monomer or spike ectodomain trimer alone. After a second dose, mice immunized with SΔC-Fer exhibited higher neutralizing titers than all other groups. Taken together, these results demonstrate that multivalent presentation of SARS-CoV-2 spike on ferritin can notably enhance elicitation of neutralizing antibodies, thus constituting a viable strategy for single-dose vaccination against COVID-19.
Competing Interest Statement
AEP and PSK are named as inventors on a provisional patent application applied for by Stanford University and the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub on immunogenic coronavirus fusion proteins and related methods.
