Dr. Brad Jones
Dr. Brad Jones, Associate Professor of Immunology in Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, WDOM, began a collaboration several years ago involving T-cell therapy approaches to HIV that has played a key role in a breakthrough study on COVID-19.
Working with investigators at Children’s National Hospital, Dr. Jones and team have shown that T-cells taken from the blood of people who recovered from a COVID-19 infection can be successfully multiplied in the lab and maintain the ability to effectively target proteins that are key to the virus’s function. Furthermore, it was found that people who recover from COVID-19 have T-cells that recognize and target viral proteins of SARS-CoV-2, giving them immunity from the virus because those T-cells are primed to fight it.
It is hoped that findings from this study, published in Blood, could lead to adoptive immunotherapy (using convalescent T-cells) in an effort to protect people who are vulnerable to COVID-19.