What parts of the immune system are protecting you against COVID? Immunology is complicated, so here's a graphic to try and explain it.
Layered defenses against SARS-CoV-2, or the “Swiss cheese” model of immunity.
Multiple types of adaptive immunity with diverse mechanisms likely provide layers of defense against COVID-19. Conceptually, these are like a “Swiss cheese model”: even though each layer is imperfect, together they keep the pathogen from breaching all layers of defense.
The graphic was inspired by the fantastic masking and public health layered defenses Swiss cheese model of @MackayIM.
The first model is the basic version. This second model incorporates local immunity in the nose/mouth/throat, and circulating immunity in the blood.
Multiple types of adaptive immunity with diverse mechanisms and locations.
Here's another way I visualize how immunity against COVID-19 likely occurs, across a gradient of disease levels, which take different amounts of time.
I use each of these in my talks.
These topics are discussed in the new pre-print on COVID-19 protective immunity here, in the section "T cells in protective immunity against COVID-19" zenodo.org/record/6375936…
Thanks to @biomedgraphics for her great graphics design help!
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Our new paper is out showing T cell responses to the Novavax vaccine, studying Novavax vaccine clinical trial participants, led by the outstanding Dr. @CModerbacher! With a nice commentary article by @PC_immuno . 🧵
The brand newly approved COVID boosters are going to work well. They won’t be a game changer—won’t prevent all infections—but are the best booster option and will provide a lot of protection.
It’s the immunity you want heading into the Fall and winter.
The Omicron booster vaxs are clearly safe. Billions of Covid mRNA vax doses have been given, with excellent safety. Regarding the new “bivalent” boosters, there was a 2021 bivalent COVID booster vax human trial…
Wonderful workshop on Vaccine Durability questions today and yesterday with NIAID. Thanks to my session co-chair @TheBcellArtist, and the awesome panelists. There was intensive and wonderful discussion, and we did make several recommendations 👇🏼
The awesome panelists were @deeptabhattacha@KingLabIPD, Rama Amara, Kanta Subbarao, and Chris Chiu (are they on Twitter?)
The rapid fire recommendations at the end of the discussion:
What kind of studies that would bring us closer to addressing some of the knowledge gaps in engineering durable vaccine immune responses?
We provided the 2x Novavax immunized donor samples, which we extensively compared to mRNA and J&J vaccines for immune memory antibodies, CD4 T cells, CD8 T cells, and memory B cells in a recent paper sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
And it is good to see a new preprint from Penny Moore and colleagues with similar Novavax Omicron data.
Crotty lab journal club by @P1RAD:
Here is an immunological reason to resist raw cookie dough: Salmonella infection can induce monocytes that disrupt pre-existing germinal center (GC) responses to a primary infection (or potentially vaccines) 🧵[1/5] cell.com/immunity/fullt…
Work @ImmunityCP by @AdiBiram, @ZivShulman & colleagues show in a mouse model of Salmonella infection that infiltration of IFNɣ-induced monocytes (CCR2+ Sca1+ Ly6C-hi) from the bone marrow to peripheral lymphoid organs suppress GC B cells [2/5]
The suppression of GC B cells is mediated by TNF⍺ and comes along with disruptions in the metabolism of GC B cells [3/5]