News release

From: Malaghan Institute of Medical Research

Research from the Malaghan Institute and the Babraham Institute in the United Kingdom has offered new insights into germinal centres, immune hubs where infection-fighting antibodies are made. Published in Science Immunology, the findings add an important layer of understanding into the resilience of germinal centres, and the role of individual immune cells in helping maintain a robust and long-lasting immune response to infectious threats, with implications for future vaccine design.

Grant Kennedy, a Senior Data Scientist working within Dr Michelle Linterman’s lab at the Malaghan Institute, says they set out to look more deeply into the role of helper T-cells in germinal centres using cutting-edge bioinformatics and genetic tools.

“In germinal centres, B-cells are trained to become antibody secreting cells that can stop pathogens through the production of highly specific antibodies. This process is helped by T-cells, in particular, helper T-cells. We know that the germinal centre response depends on these helper T-cells but how they do this in germinal centres is not well understood.

“In our research we targeted the helper T-cells using gene-editing tools, deleting them in the middle of the germinal centre response to an infection. We expected things would break completely with no immunity generated, but instead, the response just paused briefly while more helper T-cells developed and emerged from nearby, and then things carried on as before.”

Grant suggests this may be an evolutionary trait that allows our immune system to pause until things are ready to go again rather than simply give up.

“This is of course a good thing, since in the real world we might get a similar effect on our helper T-cells if, for example, we were infected with two things at the same time. However, the helper T-cell numbers never fully recovered, meaning that the response to a subsequent infection was poorer than it would otherwise been. So in the short term things worked out well, but there are long term consequences.”

For Dr Michelle Linterman, who led this research, the results further highlight the importance of helper T-cells in forming robust immune responses following vaccination.

“What this work has shown is that when it comes to designing future vaccines, we really want to have as many helper T-cells around as possible, not only to help fight the infection, but also for developing a strong memory so that you can mount a really good response the next time you get infected.

“In the future we’re aiming to look towards what adjuvants or molecules can help stimulate T-cell activity, to get an even better long-term protective response from vaccines.”