Understanding Adaptive and Innate Immune Cell Dysfunction in Patients with PASC

Introduction: There is paucity of data on adaptive and innate immune memory in the context of SARS-CoV-2 infection and in post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 (PASC). Addressing these gaps is critical to understand and inform protective therapeutic strategies that will engage and enhance adaptive and innate immune cell effector functions without causing harm. Our study directly addresses this important scientific objective to determine whether exposure to SARS-CoV-2 induces adaptive and innate immune memory.

Objective: Overall objective is to test the hypothesis that PASC is driven by autoimmune-related immunopathology illustrated by abnormalities in their T cells and their innate immune cell repertoires.

Methods: This study has three major focus: (1) to examine whether regulatory KIR+CD8+ T cell subset that targets pathogenic T cells and is active in autoimmune diseases and COVID-19, is also implicated in PASC; (2) to investigate SARS-CoV-2 epitope specific CD8+ T cell responses in PASC patients using the highly sensitive novel spheromer T cell staining reagent platform; and (3) to measure and define trained immunity by profiling 38 histone post-translational modifications and histone variants in multiple immune cell types at a single-cell resolution.

Results: Pending.

Conclusion/Discussion: Pending.

Key Topics:

• Collaborative and systems biology approaches