Studying antigen specific T cells against viral infection and cancer
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Studying antigen specific T cells against viral infection and cancer
IRAS ID
300522
Contact name
Tao Dong
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Oxford
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
Ref 13/SC/0149, The studies regarding the main cohort of patients have already ethical approval given by the South Central - Oxford C Research Ethics Committee in England ; Ref 20/SS/0028, Studies regarding the main cohort of patients have also ethical approval given by the Scotland A Research Ethics Committee. ; RPC571 and RPC572, 25 April 2013, and the WHO Ethics Review Committee
Duration of Study in the UK
5 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
We are interested in studying the memory T cell response in healthy laboratory workers and use these studies as control for the research carried out in convalescent patients following a viral disease or tumor.
Immunotherapy is considered a promising treatment approach not only for cancer but also for infectious diseases (Abd Hamid M et al., 2020; Peng Y et al., 2020). However there is conflicting evidence supporting a role for T cells in viral and cancer protection. To date, there have been few studies analyzing viral-specific T cell responses and their role in disease progression, although in human influenza infection it was shown that the virus-specific T cells are protective.
Our group has shown recently that there is a broad and strong memory T cell response in UK convalescent individuals following COVID 19 infection (Peng et al., 2021). In patients who had a severe disease the T cell immune response was stronger, probably due to high viral loads and/or a failure of the immune response in early stages of disease, in addition to the effect of virus itself and poor innate immune system. Another possibility is that the activation of the immune system induced the severity of disease. The presence of activated T cell response is also observed in patients recovered from influenza virus infection. Understanding the role of the different subsets of T cells, in particular in this study the role of memory T cells, in protection or pathogenesis is crucial for the prevention and treatment of viral diseases and tumours.REC name
London - Bloomsbury Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
21/PR/1155
Date of REC Opinion
24 Aug 2021
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion