"COVID-19 Vaccine Leads Defensive Immunity to Nose Tissue"
Oct 24, 2024
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A research team led by Professor Na Min-seok and Professor Kim Chang-hoon of Severance Hospital announced that COVID-19 vaccination induces memory T cells in nasal tissue with Professor Shin Eui-chul's team at KAIST Graduate School of Medicine.
The findings were published in the international journal Nature Communications (IF 14.7)'.
When you recover from COVID-19, memory T cells are produced. Memory T cells react when the COVID-19 virus enters the human body, preventing the risk of developing COVID-19 into severe disease.
Most of the studies that revealed the generation and role of these memory T cells have been conducted on blood. The nose is an organ where the COVID-19 virus first invades and proliferates, but it is not well known when it comes to memory T cells present in nasal tissue. In addition, it was not clear whether the messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA)-based vaccine, which is currently actively in contact, induces memory T cells in respiratory mucosa such as the nose.
The research team revealed whether vaccinated people with no experience of infection have memory T cells in nasal tissue and the characteristics of existing memory T cells.
The research team collected nasal tissue and blood from COVID-19 contactless people, vaccinated people, and breakthrough infected people (infected people after vaccination), and detected COVID-19 memory T cells and analyzed their characteristics and functions using flow cytometry using MHC-I multimer fluorescence staining and single cell RNA sequencing.
It revealed the characteristics of nasal tissue memory T cells produced by COVID-19 vaccines. COVID-19 memory T cells could also be detected in nasal tissues of vaccinated people who had never been infected, and these cells resided in nasal tissues similar to memory T cells that occur after breakthrough infection and functioned as antiviral by secreting immune substances such as interferon gamma. The period in which memory T cells are present in the nose has also exceeded one year.
Professor Na Min-seok said "mRNA vaccination alone is the first result of a study that demonstrates the production of respiratory mucosal memory T cells that play an important role in the immune system."Since we have identified its characteristics together with its existence, we expect it to be an important foundation knowledge for the development of next-generation COVID-19 vaccines that strongly induce respiratory mucosal immunity."
Meanwhile, the study was supported by the Korea Research Foundation, the Korea Health Industry Promotion Agency, and the Institute of Basic Science.
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