The Manish Butte laboratory in the UCLA Department of Immunology, Allergy, and Rheumatology takes a clinical and translational approach to understanding T cells, the major coordinating cells of the immune response. Upon infection or conventional vaccination an immune response is triggered, priming naïve T and B cells to recognize certain molecules from the pathogen as invaders. These molecules, called antigens, are present on all viruses and bacteria. In response to COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, Dr. Butte and colleagues have pioneered an approach to empirically identify antigenic peptides to influenza viruses. These novel, synthetic peptide ligands should stimulate antibody production and provide the same protective immunity as natural antigens.
This new method of identifying TCRs and screening TCR-binding ligands will open new avenues for prophylactic vaccines and therapeutic interventions in the fields of infection (more effective vaccines), allergy (eliciting tolerance to food antigens), autoimmunity (eliciting tolerance to self-antigens), and transplantation (eliciting tolerance to alloantigens). Specifically, researchers in the Butte lab are developing this novel approach of screening and detecting ligands for T-cell receptors for SARS-CoV-2. These antigens will ultimately be incorporated into vaccines and tested in mouse models to monitor conferred immunity to COVID-19. This approach will have a major impact on vaccinology: enabling the possibility of developing effective vaccines without knowing the proteome of the pathogen as an initial step. Therefore, the time to a vaccine for epidemics of unknown etiology such as COVID-19, will be greatly reduced. These ground breaking vaccines will provide more durable responses at lower doses, which allows for more vaccines to be produced faster from limited supplies.
Link to Faculty website: https://tcell.mimg.ucla.edu/
Link to relevant publications:
1) Tissue mechanics controls T-cell activation and metabolism (2020)