Convalescent Covid19 immune responses for T cell therapy development
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Analysis of SARS-Cov-2 immune cell responses in convalescent Covid-19 donors to guide development of an adoptive T cell therapy.
IRAS ID
286026
Contact name
Alasdair Fraser
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 5 months, 18 days
Research summary
The recent outbreak of Covid19 disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has shown that there is an unmet need for effective treatments for patients who are severely affected by the virus. The Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service (SNBTS) has wide experience with developing and manufacturing treatments for clinical use from donor blood, and unparalleled access to blood collected from donors who have recovered from Covid-19 infection. The SNBTS is developing a new clinical treatment using specific white blood cells isolated from recovered patients. These blood cells (known as T cells) are the main mechanism that the body uses to fight off the SARS virus, and will be isolated from blood donations from recovered donors and grown up in the lab to produce enough cells to treat other Covid19 patients in a clinical trial. This proposed project is to examine the both the whole immune system in Covid-19 patients, and compare these against uninfected donors to see what differences occur over time. We will also examine the isolated and cultured coronavirus-specific T cells from Covid-19 donors in detail to understand how they fight off the disease, and why some patients have more severe symptoms than others. We will investigate how the T cells recognise and respond to the virus and whether some donors are better than others for making the new T cell therapy.
REC name
East of Scotland Research Ethics Service REC 1
REC reference
20/ES/0073
Date of REC Opinion
22 Jul 2020
REC opinion
Unfavourable Opinion