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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 ...
