21th MayDid you watch the IUIS Webinar on Adaptive Immunity: Memory, Protection and Immunopathology in COVID-19 by Professor Andreas Radbruch (Director of the German Rheumatism Research Centre Berlin). Prof Radbruch presented data that demonstrated SARS-CoV, responsible for the 2002/3 outbreak, induced robust levels neutralising antibodies ...
2020
Can a Chimpanzee vector vaccine prevent SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia?
In a pre-peer reviewed bioRxiv manuscript, authors show that the adenovirus-vectored vaccine ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, encoding the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, is immunogenic in mice, showing a robust humoral and cell-mediated response. This was recapitulated with a single immunization of ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 in rhesus macaques...
Getting to the guts of SARS-CoV-2 infection
It has been well described how SARS-CoV-2 infects lung tissue and causes severe acute respiratory syndrome, but now there is evidence to emerge that the intestine may also be involved as a viral target. It is also known the SARS-CoV-2 receptor, ACE2 (angiotensin converting enzyme 2), is expressed on differentiated enterocytes. Lamers et al show, using human small intestinal organoids (hSIOs), that enterocytes could be infected...
Cigarette smoke triggers increased ACE-2 expression in the lung
Smith et al., showed that cigarette smoke causes a dose-dependent upregulation of ACE-2 in rodent and human lungs. Using single-cell sequencing data, they demonstrated that ACE 2 is expressed in a subset of epithelial cells that line the respiratory tract, including goblet cells, club cells, and alveolar type 2 cells.
Respiratory disease and viral shedding in rhesus macaques inoculated with SARS-CoV-2
Munster, et al. showed that SARS-CoV-2 causes respiratory disease in infected rhesus macaques, with disease lasting 8-16 days. Pulmonary infiltrates, a hallmark of human disease, were visible in lung radiographs of all animals. The shedding pattern observed in rhesus macaques was strikingly similar to that observed in humans.
IUIS Webinar: What cancer immunologists are doing about COVID-19 ?
Did you watch the IUIS Webinar : "What cancer immunologists are doing about COVID-19?" by Rachel Humphrey, a medical oncologist, who is currently serving as Head of Research and Development for TIO Bioventures. Highlights from her talk include: Intersection in advances in cancer and infectious diseases immunology...
BCG induced trained immunity & COVID-19
Recent commentary by Luke O’Neill and Mihai Netea discusses “the non-specific beneficial effects of BCG vaccination against viral infections and whether this vaccine may afford protection to COVID-19”. In their commentary, they highlight numerous epidemiological studies that have reported non-specific beneficial effects of BCG against non-related pathogens, including respiratory viruses.
Is there a SARS-CoV-2 receptor (ACE2) expression difference between males and females?
In a recent article by Song et al., titled “Expression of ACE2, the SARS-CoV-2 receptor, and TMPRSS2 in prostate epithelial cells” analysed publicly available single-cell RNA sequencing dataset and identified higher ACE2 expression on epithelial cells from normal human prostate and the lung.
Roles of different anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in COVID-19 disease and protection
Which proteins do IgM and IgG Abs recognise on the SARS-CoV-2 virus? Can these Abs provide protection or facilitate inflammation and disease progression? The simple answer is that we don’t yet know, but a commentary in Nature Reviews Immunology asked about the “potential danger of suboptimal antibody responses in COVID-19”.
Exaggerated immune response to Covid-19
Effective host immune responses are required for optimum viral control. Immune reactions to a viral threat, on the contrary, could also be harmful to the host if the response is excessive. Huang et al. noted that upon infection with Covid-19, the initial levels of inflammatory cytokines e.g. IL1β were higher...