Swedish researchers are now developing a rapid test for T cells. With the help of the test, it is hoped to gain a deeper understanding of the role of T cells in the immune system.
Researchers who want to study so-called T cells and their role in the immune system in a covid-19 infection, may soon make it much easier and faster than before.
– To better understand the connection between T cells, B cells and antibodies, we are now trying to map what T cell memory looks like in a larger group. Then we need a faster test to be able to do it, says Charlotte Thålin, responsible researcher for the so-called Community study at Danderyd Hospital.
The T cells are one part of the immune system’s white blood cells, which, among other things, look for and kill virus-infected cells. Once the infection is over, the T cells have a kind of “memory” that gives us an edge and an immunity to the virus.
What the researchers want do, is to see how long this memory, the immunity, lasts.
– The ambition is that we will analyze 2000 samples within the Community study. It is an extremely large T-cell analysis compared to what is usually done, says Sara Mangsbo, assistant professor at Uppsala University, and researches antibody drugs.
I lab has she made synthetic pieces of the coronavirus, which you add to the blood sample you want to examine. If there are T cells in the blood sample that have fought a coronary infection, they become activated and give a positive test result.
– Now we have validated this test, so now it is really just a matter of scaling up and starting this in January, says Sara Mangsbo.
In the community study, Sara Mangsbo does not believe that the t-cell memory will be tested in around 2,000 people, but that Sara Mangsbo does not believe that it will be a rapid test for ordinary men, similar to the antibody tests that now exist.
– I think this is mainly for research contexts, says Sara Mangsbo.