Publications by authors named "Eric de Sousa"
Article Synopsis
- The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic poses significant risks to immunosuppressed patients with hematological malignancies, leading to higher illness and death rates, even after vaccination.
- Many of these patients showed weak immune responses, particularly low levels of anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgG post-vaccination, prompting the use of monoclonal antibodies for prevention and highlighting the need to study T cell responses more closely.
- In a study of 47 hematological malignancy patients, only a minority developed strong immune responses to the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine, and the presence of Th1 immune responses was found to be crucial for protection against severe SARS-CoV-2 infection, unlike Th2 responses or IgG
Article Synopsis
- The study investigates how memory T cells respond to the SARS-CoV-2 virus and its variants, focusing on their link to protection against COVID-19 in healthy and cancer patients.
- Findings suggest that an imbalance in immune responses, particularly between type 1 and type 2 cytokines, increases vulnerability to the virus, especially in individuals with specific deficiencies in T helper 1 (Th1) cells.
- Current vaccines primarily trigger Th1 responses effectively against the original virus strain, highlighting the need for future vaccines to target T-cell responses against the receptor binding domain of new variants.
Successful outcome of immune checkpoint blockade in patients with solid cancers is in part associated with a high tumor mutational burden (TMB) and the recognition of private neoantigens by T-cells. The quality and quantity of target recognition is determined by the repertoire of 'neoepitope'-specific T-cell receptors (TCRs) in tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL), or peripheral T-cells. Interferon gamma (IFN-γ), produced by T-cells and other immune cells, is essential for controlling proliferation of transformed cells, induction of apoptosis and enhancing human leukocyte antigen (HLA) expression, thereby increasing immunogenicity of cancer cells.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGenetic factors such as the HLA type of patients may play a role in regard to disease severity and clinical outcome of patients with COVID-19. Taking the data deposited in the GISAID database, we made predictions using the IEDB analysis resource (TepiTool) to gauge how variants in the SARS-CoV-2 genome may change peptide binding to the most frequent MHC-class I and -II alleles in Africa, Asia and Europe. We caracterized how a single mutation in the wildtype sequence of of SARS-CoV-2 could influence the peptide binding of SARS-CoV-2 variants to MHC class II, but not to MHC class I alleles.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe intricate interplay between the immune system and microbes is an essential part of the physiological homeostasis in health and disease. Immunological recognition of commensal microbes, such as bacterial species resident in the gut or lung as well as dormant viral species, i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMemory formation, guided by microbial ligands, has been reported for innate immune cells. Epigenetic imprinting plays an important role herein, involving histone modification after pathogen-/danger-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs/DAMPs) recognition by pattern recognition receptors (PRRs). Such "trained immunity" affects not only the nominal target pathogen, yet also non-related targets that may be encountered later in life.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImmune responses to human cytomegalovirus (CMV) can be used to assess immune fitness in an individual. Further to its clinical significance in posttransplantation settings, emerging clinical and translational studies provide examples of immune correlates of protection pertaining to anti-CMV immune responses in the context of cancer or infectious diseases, e.g.
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