Thanks to its memory, the immune system is able to recognize new variants of the SarsCoV2 virus.
This is indicated by research published in the journal Nature Immunology and conducted on experimental models by the Irccs San Raffaele hospital.
It is the T lymphocytes in particular that activate against the new variants and manage to do so thanks to the memory induced by previous vaccinations or past infections.
According to the authors of the research, new frontiers are opening up in the fight against the virus.
"The indication for vaccination remains the fundamental piece to protect the population from serious disease, and our research demonstrates the effectiveness of this approach also for protection against reinfections caused by viral variants", states the research coordinator Matteo Iannacone, director of the division of Immunology, transplants and infectious diseases at San Raffaele and professor of General Pathology at the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University.
“Our research paves the way for new vaccination and therapeutic strategies for effective and long-lasting protection against the virus and its emerging variants,” adds Iannacone.
Currently one of the open problems is the appearance of new variants capable of escaping the immune system, but the new research highlights the fundamental role of T lymphocytes as a long-lasting defense weapon present in our body, beyond the response mediated by antibodies .
"Our research has revealed that T lymphocytes, thanks to their historical memory, are able to provide protection against the SarsCoV2 virus even when antibodies are not present. This form of defense, independent of antibodies, underlines the crucial significance of the response cell mediated by T lymphocytes in the fight against the virus", says Iannacone.
Luca Guidotti and Marco Bianchi, both from San Raffaele, and Raffaele De Francesco, from the National Institute of Molecular Genetics and the University of Milan, participated in the study.
The research was conducted on mice, some of which lacked antibodies but had efficient T lymphocytes and others in which the cellular receptor to which the SarsCov2 virus binds was reproduced.
"We observed how a certain subgroup of T lymphocytes, called CD8+, are crucial in combating serious infections, while the so-called CD4+ T lymphocytes play a complementary role in milder infections", notes the first author of the study, Valeria Fumagalli.
The results thus indicate that, contrary to what was believed, the antibody-mediated response is not the body's main line of defense.
"The results of our study – concludes Iannacone – modify the traditional understanding of immunity and demonstrate the importance of including the immune response mediated by T lymphocytes in the monitoring of responses to vaccinations and in the development strategies of new vaccines."
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