Patterns of immune response in COVID-19 patients

Division Of Basic Sciences - Nci

Investigators

Linked publications, trials & patents

Abstract

The first set of projects studies the B- and T-cell repertoire in patients infected with COVID-19, including patients with prior infection and patients actively infected. T-cell and B-cell immunoglobulin rearrangements are studied to determine how the immune system responds to COVID-19 and to determine whether the immune response or lack thereof correlates with clinical outcome. A second project studies COVID-19 in patients with hairy cell leukemia. Currently 32 HCL patients have been identified with evidence of COVID-19 infection. We are determining what immunologic and hematologic parameters in HCL patients, including time since last therapy, correlate with outcome. A third project involves checking spike and nucleocapsid antibody levels in patients with HCL before and after COVID-19 vaccination. By checking quantitative immunoglobulin and normal B-cell levels, we can determine correlations between prior and recent treatments, immunoglobulin levels, and normal B-cells with effectiveness of vaccination. The latter project is particularly important since immunity against the Delta variant of COVID-19 requires several-fold higher antibody level than immunity against the early virus strains.