{"id":6370,"date":"2021-06-15T08:59:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-15T12:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/?p=6370"},"modified":"2021-06-15T08:59:00","modified_gmt":"2021-06-15T12:59:00","slug":"study-reveals-recipe-for-even-more-powerful-covid-19-vaccines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/2021\/06\/study-reveals-recipe-for-even-more-powerful-covid-19-vaccines\/","title":{"rendered":"Study Reveals Recipe for Even More Powerful COVID-19 Vaccines"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"paragraph | gutter_20_0\"><strong>Original article from The Brink <\/strong><strong class=\"article-header__byline article-header__byline--article\"><span class=\"author | align_items_center bold font_primary margin_right_3\"><span class=\"bold\">by Kat J. McAlpine. June 11<\/span><\/span>, 2021<\/strong><\/p>\n<div class=\"lead | border_box gutter_16--desktop gutter_16--tablet relative\">\n<div class=\"lead | border_box gutter_16--desktop gutter_16--tablet relative\">\n<div class=\"lead | border_box gutter_16--desktop gutter_16--tablet relative\">\n<h4 class=\"deck\">NEIDL, Broad scientists say next-generation vaccines could stimulate another arm of the immune system, imparting better protection against coronavirus variants<\/h4>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers from Boston University\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/\">National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories<\/a> (NEIDL) and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard say it\u2019s the first real look at exactly what types of \u201cred flags\u201d the human body uses to enlist the help of T cells\u2014killers 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\u2014the T cells\u2014could dramatically increase immunity against coronavirus, and importantly, its variants.<\/p>\n<p>In their findings, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cell.com\/cell\/fulltext\/S0092-8674(21)00701-7#%20\">published in <em>Cell<\/em><\/a>, 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, \u201ccompanies should reevaluate their vaccine designs,\u201d says <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/profile\/mohsan-saeed\/\">Mohsan Saeed<\/a>, a NEIDL virologist and the co-corresponding author of the paper.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3) labs. \u201cThis was a big undertaking because many research techniques are difficult to adapt for high containment levels [such as BSL-3],\u201d Saeed says. \u201cThe overall coronavirus research pipeline we\u2019ve created at the NEIDL, and the support of our entire NEIDL team, has helped us along the way.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/articles\/2021\/study-reveals-recipe-for-even-more-powerful-covid-19-vaccines\/\">Click to Read Full Article on The Brink<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Original article from The Brink by Kat J. McAlpine. June&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6107,"featured_media":6371,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3075,1298,452,3082],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6370"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6370"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6372,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6370\/revisions\/6372"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}