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From the latest blog post of Derek Lowe :
One of the big (and so far unanswered) questions about the coronavirus epidemic is what kind of immunity people have after becoming infected. This is important for the idea of “re-infection” (is it even possible?) and of course for vaccine development. We’re getting more and more information in this area, though, and this new paper is a good example. A team from the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, UNC, UCSD, and Mt. Sinai (NY) reports details about the T cells of people who have recovered from the virus.
[...] So overall, this paper makes the prospects for a vaccine look good: there is indeed a robust response by the adaptive immune system, to several coronavirus proteins. And vaccine developers will want to think about adding in some of the other antigens mentioned in this paper, in addition to the Spike antigens that have been the focus thus far. It seems fair to say, though, that the first wave of vaccines will likely be Spike-o-centric, and later vaccines might have these other antigens included in the mix. But it also seems that Spike-protein-targeted vaccines should be pretty effective, so that’s good. The other good news is that this team looked for the signs of an antibody-dependent-enhancement response, which would be bad news, and did not find evidence of it in the recovering patients (I didn’t go into these details, but wanted to mention that finding, which is quite reassuring). And it also looks like the prospects for (reasonably) lasting immunity after infection (or after vaccination) are good. This, from what I can see, is just the sort of response that you’d want to see for that to be the case. Clinical data will be the real decider on that, but there’s no reason so far to think that a person won’t have such immunity if they fit this profile.
Onward from here, then – there will be more studies like this coming, but this is a good, solid look into the human immunology of this outbreak. And so far, so good.
Be sure to read the article if you’ve been wondering what your thymus has done for you lately.
Journal Reference
Alba Grifoni, Daniela Weiskopf. Targets of T cell responses to SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus in humans with COVID-19 disease and unexposed individuals, Cell (DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2020.05.015)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2020, @08:30PM
my hope is that we "domesticate" sars2: going in and out and in and out of humans long enough (attenuation?) and avoiding going back to original host.
this way it will probably get less lethal and just join the club of other corona viruses that infect humans (another type of common cold)...
one wonders if there once were really really lethal viruses in the human past but they made quick work of their hosts: that they made them too ill to move around and live long enough to infect others ... thus dying out ... and forgotten.
obviously there are still viruses that infect humans around. for influence, for which the cold winter months are high season, jumps over the equator and then back or/and it just lies dormant in some bunker with a sign "do not open until september!" ... or dengue fever ...zika? the pool remains ... it seems.
unless there is a mechanism we don't know about, that is akind to a geyser, a literal hole in the ground from which virus are emitted by the planet?
if this is not the case then all viruses that infect humans are just going round and around and around thus kindda making the likelihood of the sars2 disappearing unrealistic. but one can hope! ^_^