Multiple studies by scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) propose that populations already possess immune cells ready to go to battle against the H5N1 virus also reputed as highly pathogenic avian influenza.
The H5N1 “bird flu” virus surfaced in 2022 and has infected animals; birds in particular, and also cattle. Scientists and vaccine professionals at LJI are closely observing this new virus. In their new study, LJI Professor Alessandro Sette, Dr. Biol.Sci., and LJI Research Assistant Professor Alba Grifoni, Ph. D., aligned genetic sequences of H5N1 with genetic sequences of seasonal human adapted influenza viruses.
The LJI team found considerable evidence suggesting that many people have pre-existing ‘cross reactive’ T cells waiting to go after H5N1 – should the virus ever change to efficiently enter human cells and spread in the population.
‘With this in mind, we can hypothesise that a certain number of T cell cross-reactive responses might already be out there and can help in reducing disease severity,’ adds Sette, Co-Director of the La Jolla Institute of Immunology’s Center for Vaccine Innovation. The details of the study were disclosed in a preprint manuscript deposited onto the server platform bioRxiv.
That implies that their immunity system has developed a certain measure of immunity against popular influenza viruses.
Such T cells were discovered by Sette and Grifoni investigating how efficiently they would be able to recognize the new H5N1 virus. The scientists relied on the data gotten from LJI led Immune Epitope Database (IEDB) to explain in details how the human T cells attacked some specific proteins or epitopes in seasonal flu virus. They then built a computational method to identify whether the H5N1 virus has such fragile epitopes.
The researchers also discovered that most of the epitopes are conserved between H5N1 and seasonal IFVs. This means that a large number of people could already be harbouring T cells which are capable of fighting H5N1 infections.
This is why we can confidently say that—in the vast majority of cases—our T cells already have memory reactions and can offer pre-existing protection against H5N1, Grifoni believes.”That’s good news. “
To improve the knowledge on H5N1 infections the following steps were proposed The researchers cannot completely confirm and demonstrate that these T cell responses can reduce disease severity; yet, the researchers have [some] reason to believe that cross-reactive T cells could make good fighters — at least based on the pieces of evidence presented in the previous work. Cross reactive T cells in previous work of scientists at LJI have established that can reduce the gravity of COVID and even mpox.
Hence, for future work the researchers want to assess the strength of these T cell responses. They are also ready to assess immune cells from human samples, if H5N1 starts to jump from person to person.
Reference:
La Jolla Institute for Immunology. Research suggests many people already have T cells with the power to fight avian flu
