Study Reveals Recipe for Even More Powerful COVID-19 Vaccines

NEIDL, Broad scientists say next-generation vaccines could stimulate another arm of the immune system, imparting better protection against coronavirus variants

A new study looking at the way human cells activate the immune system in response to SARS-CoV-2 infection could open the door to even more effective and powerful vaccines against the coronavirus and its rapidly emerging variants keeping the global pandemic smoldering.

Researchers from Boston University’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard say it’s the first real look at exactly what types of “red flags” the human body uses to enlist the help of T cells—killers sent out by the immune system to destroy infected cells. Until now, COVID vaccines have been focused on activating a different type of immune cell, B cells, which are responsible for creating antibodies. Developing vaccines to activate the other arm of the immune system—the T cells—could dramatically increase immunity against coronavirus, and importantly, its variants.

In their findings, published in Cell, the researchers say current vaccines might lack some important bits of viral material capable of triggering a holistic immune response in the human body. Based on the new information, “companies should reevaluate their vaccine designs,” says Mohsan Saeed, a NEIDL virologist and the co-corresponding author of the paper.

Saeed, a BU School of Medicine assistant professor of biochemistry, performed experiments on human cells infected with coronavirus. He isolated and identified those missing pieces of SARS-CoV-2 proteins inside one of the NEIDL’s Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3) labs. “This was a big undertaking because many research techniques are difficult to adapt for high containment levels [such as BSL-3],” Saeed says. “The overall coronavirus research pipeline we’ve created at the NEIDL, and the support of our entire NEIDL team, has helped us along the way.”