August 2020

The South African Immunology Society (SAIS) in collaboration with Immunopaedia hosted a webinar on "Antibody responses and serology testing" which featured talks by by Penny Moore: "Can we characterised immunity to COVID-19" and Elizabeth Mayne: "COVID-19 serology testing in SA - ready for prime time?". Some highlights of Penny's talk include the description of early SARS-CoV-2 antibody (Ab) kinetics.

This week we highlight a talk by Professor Ulrich Blank entitled “IgE and its affinity IgE receptor as a pharmacological target”. In the first part of his presentation, Professor Ulrich gave a general overview of IgE and its high affinity receptor in the context of type I hypersensitivity reactions. He then described the different therapeutic strategies developed or in development that target IgE and its receptor interactions...

Using a humanized mouse model and B cells from COVID-19 convalescent individuals, Hansen et al., describe the discovery of two SARS-CoV2-specific antibodies: REGN10933 and REGN10987 that are currently being tested for immunotherapeutic potential against COVID-19 (NCT04426695; NCT04425629). Both antibodies non-competitively bind to SARS-CoV-2 receptor binding domain...

Based on the heterogeneity of COVID-19 pathology, Sacha and colleagues hypothesised that cytokines such as IL-6, IL-8, IL-1β and TNF could potentially predict disease severity and outcome. Sacha demonstrated that IL-6, IL-8 and TNF, individually and when combined in a model, correlate with various aspects of disease severity and survival outcome. Based on these results, targeting these cytokines...

Nguyen et al. published a review article describing the use of immunoglobulins as a treatment for COVID-19. As COVID-19 cases rise at a rapid rate, there is great need to explore pre-existing treatments while novel treatments and vaccines are being developed. Such pre-existing treatments include Intravenous Immunoglobulins and Hyperimmune globulins. However, production of viral antibodies have been shown...

BioNTech recently published results of their Phase 1/2 safety and immunogenicity BNT162b1 COVID-19 vaccine trial. BNT162b1 is a lipid-nanoparticle encapsulated RNA vaccine that encodes the receptor-binding domain of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. The biotech company incorporated 1-methyl-pseudouridine instead of uridine in to the RNA sequence which dampens innate immune sensing of the RNA....

This week we highlight IUIS webinar by Elizabeth Mann and Madhvi Menon, who discussed findings from their recent longitudinal immune profiling study with admitted COVID-19 patients across four hospitals in Manchester at the height of the pandemic in the UK. Madvi Menon began the webinar describing the CIRCO longitudinal study which recruited individuals with varying COVID-19 severity.

This summary highlight talks by Mehrnaz Mesdaghi who gave an overview of the role of mast cells, basophil and eosinophils in allergy, and how effector functions of these cells can be leverage for diagnostic tests, Joana Vitte's presentation on Mast Cell Activation Syndromes, and Sabelo Hadebe's talk that focused on the role of T cells, mainly Th2 cells in allergy.

A recent preprint article in Medrxiv explored whether inflammation in COVID-19 is a direct response to presence of the virus in organs or an independent immuno-pathologic process. Post-mortem tissue samples were obtained from 11 hospitalized patients with fatal COVID-19 and assessed for presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA and proteins alongside histological evidence of inflammation/tissue damage.

The D614G mutation in the spike protein of SARS-Co-V2 was described recently and has now become the dominant viral strain in global circulation and has also been shown to result in greater viral infectivity. In a recent pre-peer reviewed paper, authors show that the D614G mutation is in fact more susceptible...