Doctors Consider Convalescent T Cell Therapy for COVID-19

Researchers propose that an infusion of memory T cells from people who have recovered from SARS-CoV-2 infections could treat severe disease.

Written byAbby Olena, PhD
| 3 min read

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Physicians and researchers have had questionable success treating patients with severe COVID-19 with either antibody-based drugs or convalescent plasma. Neither of those strategies is a cell-based therapy, and, in a preprint posted October 26 on bioRxiv, researchers propose collecting SARS-CoV-2–specific memory T cells from recovered individuals, banking the cells, and infusing them into patients as a treatment for infections.

“There are data now that are coming out from the analysis of the immune response that are suggesting that the T cells are more important for protection than antibodies,” says Antonio Bertoletti, who studies the development of immunological therapies at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore and did not participate in the work. There is therefore a rationale to use T cells to control the disease, he adds.

Previously, researchers had attempted memory T cell therapy to suppress cytomegalovirus and Epstein Barr virus. The recipients were leukemia patients who ...

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  • abby olena

    As a freelancer for The Scientist, Abby reports on new developments in life science for the website. She has a PhD from Vanderbilt University and got her start in science journalism as the Chicago Tribune’s AAAS Mass Media Fellow in 2013. Following a stint as an intern for The Scientist, Abby was a postdoc in science communication at Duke University, where she developed and taught courses to help scientists share their research. In addition to her work as a science journalist, she leads science writing and communication workshops and co-produces a conversational podcast. She is based in Alabama.  

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