Dozens of test tubes in a holder

T-Cell Based Vaccines May Be Key to Long-Term Coronavirus Immunity

Thu, May 26, 2022
Crystal structure of a TCR from a COVID-19 patient bound to a SARS-CoV-2 spike epitope and MHC.

The emergence of multiple variants of SARS-CoV-2 has brought major challenges to the effectiveness in vaccine development. Researchers concentrating their efforts on mutations of the virus, including Roy Mariuzza, IBBR Fellow and Professor, Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics, University of Maryland, College Park have relied heavily on the Advanced Photon Source (APS), a US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility at the DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory to fight these variants. The Mariuzza team used the APS to provide some of the first available data on how receptors on the surface of T cells recognize specific SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins. Their work, published in Nature Communications could be integral in developing a vaccine that will elicit a T cell immune response that recognizes multiple variants and may be the key to long-term coronavirus immunity. For more details, visit the recent article on Newswise.