Pfizer Vaccine Induces Immune Structures Key to Lasting Immunity

[zaax]

the-scientist.com/news-opin...?

Sorry that went miles above my head - decode please

[seelel]

The short answer is that in healthy people, the mRNA vaccine has been found to not only produce the antibody circulating in the blood, but also produce antibody in the germinal centres of the lymph nodes.

The significance is that antibody in the blood does not necessarily mean long term immunity, whereas in the germinal centres, it means that memory antibody is being produced, and therefore could be long term immunity. Time alone will tell.

[AussieNeil Administrator]

That's all good news. The germinal centres are the microenvironments in lymph nodes where lymphoblasts (immature B- cells from the bone marrow), undergo changes in their DNA so that they can make a B-cell receptor specific to parts of the SARS-CoV-2 virus which causes COVID-19 infections. The process is mediated by helper T-cells which work with the B-cells to create highly selective mature B-cells. The process is called somatic hypermutation and it changes the IGHV genetic region that specifies how the receptor is made. (It's the same region examined In CLL cells to check if we have unmutated or mutated IGVH). It's all this activity causing lots of new B-cells to be cloned that causes our nodes to swell.). That long lived memory B-cells are produced and that IgA is formed is really good news, because IgA concentrates in the mucosal lining of our respiratory system.

This research is just validating what was hoped for in healthy trial participants. Unfortunately for us, CLL drives T cells to exhaustion in watch and wait, so this process may not work that well for us. During treatment, the T cells are less likely to be exhausted, but CLL treatments can also kill of some T cells. Also all CLL treatments kill off healthy B-cells as well as CLL cells, so if we are in treatment or have recently finished treatment, we probably won't have many lymophoblasts. At least vaccination programs looks like they will dramatically reduce the spread of coronavirus, reducing the opportunity for new, tougher variants to arise, so our chances of being protected via herd immunity now look better.

Neil