T cell Vaccines Lab (Swadling UCL) 🧬👩🏽‍🔬

Finally, Dr Leo Swadling will chair the “Immune interactions in tissues” session on Wednesday morning.
The whole lab will be at #BSI25 — lots of chances to meet, network, and talk T cells with us!

In Poster Session 2:
Ruarí McErlean
Poster P.078
“SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells associated with protection from infection remain subdominant post-pandemic.”

Synadrez Prima Putra
Poster P.008
“Genome-wide analysis of HPV T-cell epitopes reveals conserved and promiscuous targets for vaccines.”

Don’t miss our poster presenters!
Selin Cankat (Poster Session 1, Tuesday)
Poster P.007
“In silico and in vitro framework for identifying cross-reactive T-cell epitopes – Rational design of a pan-coronavirus T-cell vaccine.”

On Tuesday, Dr Peter Thomas presents:
“Investigating TCR repertoire dynamics during SARS-CoV-2 abortive infection.”

📍 Hall 1B, 12:00 - 12:15

He’ll share insights and analysis methods for TCR specificity and kinetics in a fascinating patient cohort.

One week until the Swadling Lab heads to #BSI25!
We have 4 members presenting this year — 3 posters + 1 talk — covering T cell responses, SARS-CoV-2, and vaccine design.
Come find us and say hello!
#vaccines #immunology #Tcells #virus

Very happy to share our latest manuscript about TCR-epitope recognition specificity: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

This work was performed as the starting point of a PhD for a very talented clinican scientist, Syandrez
Prima Putra, with some help from PhD student Selin Cankat

We hope this resource will be useful for those doing immune monitoring of HPV and for those designing vaccines to induce cross-reactive T cells.

We curate Epitopes by protein, HLA-restriction, and HPV type in supplementary tables.

This showed proof-of-concept that immunogenic cross-reactivity epitopes can be identified for inclusion in a pan-genotype vaccine and we have identified the regions where more epitope mapping is needed to realise this aim 👩🏽‍🔬

Filling the gaps In silico: With a curated list of HLA alleles and epitope prediction tools (NetMHC) we determined which known epitopes could be restricted by multiple HLA alleles (promiscuous) and are immunodominant (seen often in individuals of the right HLA type).

Filling the gaps In silico: We aligned 485 HPV reference sequences ⁑ (curated by PAVE: pave.niaid.nih.gov) and looked at conservation of known epitopes across types.

Some regions are so understudied 🫣there are just a handful, or even a single epitope described, such as for the conserved L2 protein. A clear research bias that if addressed could lead to the identification cross-reactive/protective T cell immunity.

Current Bias: Due to interest in T cells targeting oncogenic proteins E6/E7 in high-risk types ♋️and CD4 help to B cells making Abs to E1, there is clear bias in known epitopes

To start this work, Syandrez performed a meta-analysis of known epitopes 🖥️ (using the fantastic resource IEDB @iedb.bsky.social) and investigated what is already known about:
- viral proteome coverage 🧫
- HLA-restriction 🧬
- conservation of epitopes across types (high and low risk) 🌴

🚨Preprint🚨: To better utilise the potential for cross-protective T cells in HPV vaccines we would like to take a rational approach to designing T-cell inducing HPV vaccines (prophylactic and therapeutic) ⚔️

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

@biorxivpreprint.bsky.social REFLEX, a Novel Immune Profiling Assay, Combining TCR Repertoire and Multiome at Massively Scalable Single-cell Resolution to Catapult Exploration of T-cell Derived Immunity
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Your morning commute isn't just routine – It's part of an invisible network that can help viruses spread. New research reveals how modelling disease transmission based on daily commuting patterns could transform pandemic response strategies.

Swipe to learn more. 👉

Epigenetic regulation of T cell exhaustion in cancer - Nature Reviews Cancer Transcriptional and epigenetic mechanisms governing T cell exhaustion substantially impact immunotherapy effectiveness. In this Review, Kang et al. outline epigenetic regulatory programmes that i...

Review @natrevcancer.nature.com @stjuderesearch.bsky.social
Epigenetic regulation of T cell exhaustion in cancer
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines sensitize tumours to immune checkpoint blockade - Nature mRNA vaccines targeting SARS-CoV-2 also sensitize tumours to immune checkpoint inhibitors.

Ever heard of this #vaccination side effect? SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination significantly increased anti tumour responses and survival in patients with metastatic melanoma and NSCLC undergoing treatment with ICIs.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#vaccineswork #tcells #immunology

👶✈️ Balancing caregiving and academic travel?

Join Dr. Laura Pallett for "The Dual Demands of Academic Travel and Caregiving"

🗓️ Sept 25 | 🕒15:00 CEST
🔗https://tinyurl.com/yefis2025-ia2

Hosted by the Improving Academia group of yEFIS

Inflammatory conditions shape phenotypic and functional characteristics of lung-resident memory T cells in mice Lung tissue-resident memory T cells (TRM) are critical for the local control of respiratory tract infections caused by influenza A viruses (IAV). Here we compare TRM populations induced by intranasal ...

An HA/NP/IL-1B adenovirus led to a different profile of lung-resident Trms than natural H1N1 infection with the adjuvanted vaccine leading to longer lived lung-resident Trms than infection.
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...
#immunology #vaccine #Tcell #memory

154 million lives and counting: 5 charts reveal the power of vaccines But public-health specialists worry that misinformation and funding cuts could affect vaccination rates.

5 charts that show #vaccineswork
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Intranasal recombinant protein subunit vaccine targeting TLR3 induces respiratory tract IgA and CD8 T cell responses and protects against respiratory virus infection This study demonstrates that intranasal subunit vaccines containing TLR3-stimulating cationic liposomes effectively induce airway IgA and T cell responses, which could be utilised in future viral pand...

www.thelancet.com/journals/ebi...
#tcell #vaccineswork #immunology #vaccine

In vivo challenge after vaccination also showed strong protection for the i.n. administered vaccine, although protection wasn’t compared to the i.m. vaccine. Further evidence for targeting the local mucosa to facilitate protective immunity.

Another nice study illustrating that targeting responses to the nasal mucosa could be superior to systemic administration. The CAF09b adjuvant plus recombinant protein in an i.n. vaccine induced better nasal IgA and CD8 responses than i.m. mRNA.

Cool to see this upcoming phase 2 clinical trial for aerosolised vaccine formulations, with planned measurements of lung T cell responses
publications.ersnet.org/content/erjo...
#clinicaltrial #tcell #vaccineswork #immunology #vaccine

Vaccine-induced T cell responses correlate with reduced risk of severe COVID-19 in a placebo-controlled efficacy trial Our findings show that higher vaccine-elicited T cell responses are significantly correlated with decreased risk of severe COVID-19, but not with risk of any symptomatic COVID-19. These results repres...

T cell repertoire analysis: www.thelancet.com/journals/ebi...

#tcell #vaccineswork #vaccine #clinicaltrial #immunology

Safety and Efficacy of Single-Dose Ad26.COV2.S Vaccine against Covid-19 | NEJM The Ad26.COV2.S vaccine is a recombinant, replication-incompetent human adenovirus type 26 vector encoding full-length severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) spike protein in ...

Full phase 3 study: www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

Lots of food for thought from these two studies.
1) It’s great to see comprehensive repertoire analysis being applied to clinical trial data
2) Could a bespoke T cell targeting vaccine have added benefit?
3) How does site of injection affect systemic vs local immune responses?

This follow-up used repertoire analysis and functional assays to show
1) T cells were only partially correlated with the protective immunity to SARS-CoV-2.
2) In those with breakthrough infection, T cell responses correlated with less severe symptoms.
A great analysis overall!