Do you think we will see tea cells being more regularly talked about as variants come forward? You know, as bodies potentially continue to stumble. I think they're two key drivers to that, potentially. Technology and standardizing assays could be pivotal for the development of new vaccines. There's quite a few people in the population who are still quite vulnerable to covet and to infection. We have huge swas of the population who haven't even had one dose of avaccine. They're still unprotected. But it doesn't mean that if you talk to an icy nurse recently, that they're relaxed and happyri i mean, the hospitals have still been full.
Much of the coverage of COVID immunity often focuses on antibody response and for good reason - these small, y-shaped proteins can detect, and in some cases neutralise, viruses like SARS-CoV-2. But as variants like Omicron evolve to evade antibodies, the role of another part of the immune system, T cells, has been brought into sharper focus. These immune cells work in a different way to antibodies, attacking infected cells rather than the virus itself, which can make their response broader and more robust. Now, research is showing that, unlike antibodies, T cell potency is not impacted by the mutations in variants like Omicron. In this episode of Coronapod, we ask why T cells are so often overlooked, and what role they might be playing in our protection from the coronavirus.News:‘Killer’ immune cells still recognize Omicron variantSubscribe to Nature Briefing, an unmissable daily round-up of science news, opinion and analysis free in your inbox every weekday.
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