Countering ‘memory loss’ in the immune system
After recovering from a cold or other infection, your body’s immune system is primed to react quickly if the same agent tries to infect you. White blood cells called memory T cells specifically remember the virus or bacterium and patrol the body looking for it. Vaccines work on the same principle: Harmless fragments of a virus or bacterium provoke the immune system to generate memory T cells that can attack the real thing later on.As time passes, however, this specific immunity can wear off. That’s because not all memory T cells live long enough to foster long-term immunity. MIT biologists have now demonstrated the conditions that favor development of long-term memory T cells over short-term memory T cells, which can respond quickly but don’t stick around for very long after the initial infection. That discovery could help vaccine designers better tailor their formulas to elicit long-term memory immunity, says Jianzhu...