COVID-19: How a new blood test could help speed up vaccine development and population screening

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, scientists across disciplines and geographical locations have collaborated in unprecedented ways.

The speed at which diagnostic tests went from conception to reality was astounding, as were the global efforts to test new and repurposed drugs to find treatments for those with the disease.

However, effective treatments are only tentatively emerging. Diagnostic testing capabilities have been slow to ramp up to the scales needed to keep the pandemic at bay.

Many questions remain about how the virus causes catastrophic deterioration in some but leaves many others relatively unscathed.

Undeterred, investigators continue to research and develop new arsenals in this global fight.

Medical News Today spoke to one such scientist, who recently began a new project with a grant from the British government’s Innovate UK fund.

James Hindley, Ph.D., is the Executive Director at Indoor Biotechnologies in Cardiff in Wales, and the work is underway in collaboration with Martin Scurr, Ph.D., a research associate at Cardiff University’s School of Medicine.

Working with the team at Indoor Biotechnologies, Dr. Hindley and Dr. Scurr are developing a new type of test that can show if someone has developed specific T cells to SARS-CoV-2.

T cells are a type of white blood cell. They play a key role in how our bodies fight off viral pathogens, such as SARS-CoV-2, the new coronavirus.

MNT: Why is there a need to develop a new T cell test?

Dr. James Hindley: The current focus for testing immunity to the SARS-CoV-2 virus is based on the assessment of antibodies.

These are an undoubtedly important part of our memory immune response to viruses. However, another critical component of our immune response to viruses is the T cell. These also provide memory immune responses and may even be more sensitive than antibodies.

The challenge with T cells is that, unlike antibodies, measuring them is not simple.

As such, there is a need for a simple T cell test, that could enable testing for virus-specific T cells to be done routinely.

MNT: What will the test results show?

Dr. Hindley: The test we have developed can provide quantitative results measuring the magnitude of an individual’s T cell response to the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

We can also run in parallel the same test for other human coronaviruses and viruses, such as influenza. This allows us to establish a person’s immune status. Like antibodies, whether a positive T cell test is protective against future infection remains to be determined.

MNT: Who will benefit from your test, and who can administer it?

Dr. Hindley: At first, we believe the primary use of this test will be for vaccine development, to determine whether a T cell response to the vaccine has been generated and whether that is adequate to be protective from infection.

Such testing would be done in laboratories, alongside other tests needed for the vaccine trial.

We also believe this test will enable public health bodies to perform much wider screenings of the population. Again, this would be carried out by laboratories in conjunction with antibody testing to determine what constitutes protective immunity.

Once this is proven, the assessment could then be made available to the wider public, but it is likely to remain as a test performed in a laboratory.