<div style="text-align: justify;"><b style="font-size: 1rem;">A new study has shown that human T cells have an important role to play in controlling Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) infection, a highly contagious and seasonal respiratory virus that mainly causes common cold symptoms in healthy adults but can cause more serious lung infections in infants, the immunocompromised and older individuals.</b><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Strikingly, RSV infection remains the most common reason for hospitalization of infants and young children. Health officials have recently promoted flu vaccines and reformulated COVID boosters as they prepare for a respiratory infection season that could rival some of the worst cold and flu seasons in history.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A new study published in JCI Insight, led by Angela Wahl, PhD, Raymond Pickles, PhD, and J. Victor Garcia, PhD, with the International Center for the Advancement of Translational Science (ICATS), the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, and the Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases (IGHID) at the UNC School of Medicine has shown that human T cells have an important role to play in controlling infection.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Vaccine strategies for RSV have largely focused on the induction of an antibody response. Using novel precision animal models of RSV infection, we've gained novel insight into how the human immune system, and in particular human T cells, controls and clears RSV infection," said Wahl, assistant professor of medicine and assistant director of the UNC ICATS.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Our data show that T cells can independently control RSV infection in human lung tissue in the absence of an RSV-specific antibody response. While a vaccine-induced RSV-specific T cell response would not be able to prevent infection, it could accelerate virus clearance and ameliorate disease if vaccine-elicited antibodies fail to prevent infection, due to antigenic variability among circulating strains."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The research team used two novel precision animal models to analyze RSV-induced human lung pathology and human immune correlates of protection at pre-determined time points. They showed that primed human CD8 T cells or CD4 T cells effectively and independently controlled RSV replication in human lung tissue in the absence of an RSV-specific antibody response. HT</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">bnbd24/kh</div>