Thread by @profshanecrotty

I gave a short talk today at a WHO symposium on COVID-19 vaccine correlates of immunity. It was an excellent conference. My role was to highlight and discuss potential roles of T cells in vaccine mechanisms or correlates of protection. 🧵

I decided to record a copy of the presentation, posted above.
The conference was organized by Stanley Plotkin

As part of the talk I show this model. The concept here is that as variant divergence increases, the amount of the protective immunity provided by neutralizing antibodies decreases, but the amount of protective immunity provided by memory T cells and B cells is preserved.

The amounts of those immunity contributions at preventing or reducing COVID-19 are open to discussion. And hopefully you can tell from the drawing that this is not a formal model.

Thanks to @nataliexdean for the encouragement to post this. 🙂

The topic of how multiple branches of the immune system are likely valuable for fighting variants is nicely covered in this Scientific American article. (plus it shows an exploded virus!)

scientificamerican.com/article/your-i…

And evidence that the T cell responses are conserved are shown here and elsewhere.
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

One shortcoming of that graphic is the simplistic use of the term "Protection". Another sketch I use deals with that directly here, with explainer:

https://twitter.com/profshanecrotty/status/1367559003534811136?s=20