Patterns of immune response in COVID-19 patients

Division Of Basic Sciences - Nci

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

At this time data from all projects is being analyzed. For the 1st project involving patients without active malignancy who are acutely infected with COVID, we found a broad distribution of responding B-cell clones, without noticeable skewing of IGHV gene usage. Some patients demonstrated monoclonal populations carrying highly mutated IGHV rearrangements indicating antigen experience at a few or all of the time points tested, including even before anti-SARS-CoV2 antibodies were detected. We did not find a particular pattern of immune response correlating with outcome. For the 2nd project, a total of 129 patients with COVID19 have been tested, including 115 with HCL, 5 with HCL variant (HCLv), 1 with HCL and multiple myeloma, 1 with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, and 7 without hematologic malignancy. We found striking differences in the immune response to COVID with respect to antibody production with respect to recent treatment and presence of normal B-cells. We found similar results in the larger project of the study of the immune response to vaccine in patients with HCL.