ICYMI: Abortive infection: T cells as early, antibody-independent defenders

Abortive infection: T cells as early, antibody-independent defenders

Nature Reviews Immunology, Published online: 02 April 2026; doi:10.1038/s41577-026-01298-yNeutralizing antibodies are widely viewed as the frontline of antiviral defence. Yet emerging evidence reveals that T cells can terminate infection before it is detectable by routine clinical assays, independently of antibodies. Recognizing this capacity reframes correlates of protection and calls for vaccines that harness T cells as early, decisive defenders.

dlvr.it

Have you ever wondered why children starting nursery/daycare pick up so many germs? I certainly did, and with a crack team of parent-scientists/clinicians, we set out to answer that question. Is childcare a germ factory or an immune bootcamp? journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Germ factories or immune boot camps? Infection and immunity in childcare settings | Clinical Microbiology Reviews

SUMMARYChildcare outside the home is a common experience for many children in high-income countries. It is associated with an increase in the incidence of infectious diseases—not just for the child bu...

journals.asm.org

One week until the Swadling Lab heads to #BSI25! We have 4 members presenting this year — 3 posters + 1 talk — covering T cell responses, SARS-CoV-2, and vaccine design. Come find us and say hello! #vaccines #immunology #Tcells #virus

Very happy to share our latest manuscript about TCR-epitope recognition specificity: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🚨Preprint🚨: To better utilise the potential for cross-protective T cells in HPV vaccines we would like to take a rational approach to designing T-cell inducing HPV vaccines (prophylactic and therapeutic) ⚔️ www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

@biorxivpreprint.bsky.social REFLEX, a Novel Immune Profiling Assay, Combining TCR Repertoire and Multiome at Massively Scalable Single-cell Resolution to Catapult Exploration of T-cell Derived Immunity www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Your morning commute isn't just routine – It's part of an invisible network that can help viruses spread. New research reveals how modelling disease transmission based on daily commuting patterns could transform pandemic response strategies. Swipe to learn more. 👉

Review @natrevcancer.nature.com @stjuderesearch.bsky.social Epigenetic regulation of T cell exhaustion in cancer www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Epigenetic regulation of T cell exhaustion in cancer - Nature Reviews Cancer

Transcriptional and epigenetic mechanisms governing T cell exhaustion substantially impact immunotherapy effectiveness. In this Review, Kang et al. outline epigenetic regulatory programmes that i...

nature.com

Ever heard of this #vaccination side effect? SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination significantly increased anti tumour responses and survival in patients with metastatic melanoma and NSCLC undergoing treatment with ICIs. www.nature.com/articles/s41... #vaccineswork #tcells #immunology

SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines sensitize tumours to immune checkpoint blockade - Nature

mRNA vaccines targeting SARS-CoV-2 also sensitize tumours to immune checkpoint inhibitors.

nature.com

👶✈️ Balancing caregiving and academic travel? Join Dr. Laura Pallett for "The Dual Demands of Academic Travel and Caregiving" 🗓️ Sept 25 | 🕒15:00 CEST 🔗https://tinyurl.com/yefis2025-ia2 Hosted by the Improving Academia group of yEFIS

An HA/NP/IL-1B adenovirus led to a different profile of lung-resident Trms than natural H1N1 infection with the adjuvanted vaccine leading to longer lived lung-resident Trms than infection. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC... #immunology #vaccine #Tcell #memory

Inflammatory conditions shape phenotypic and functional characteristics of lung-resident memory T cells in mice

Lung tissue-resident memory T cells (TRM) are critical for the local control of respiratory tract infections caused by influenza A viruses (IAV). Here we compare TRM populations induced by intranasal ...

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

5 charts that show #vaccineswork www.nature.com/articles/d41...

154 million lives and counting: 5 charts reveal the power of vaccines

But public-health specialists worry that misinformation and funding cuts could affect vaccination rates.

nature.com

Another nice study illustrating that targeting responses to the nasal mucosa could be superior to systemic administration. The CAF09b adjuvant plus recombinant protein in an i.n. vaccine induced better nasal IgA and CD8 responses than i.m. mRNA.

Cool to see this upcoming phase 2 clinical trial for aerosolised vaccine formulations, with planned measurements of lung T cell responses publications.ersnet.org/content/erjo... #clinicaltrial #tcell #vaccineswork #immunology #vaccine

New interesting data on the role of T cells in Ad26-COV2.S-mediated immunity to SARS-CoV-2! Back in 2021, a phase 3 study showed that single dose was able to confer protection from symptomatic COVID-19 and reduced severity of any breakthrough infections.

Jamie and Leo will be at #ExRdFest Saturday representing IMMPROVE 🧪🧬at the "would you get sick for science" stand 🧪🧬 talking about human challenge, vaccines and immunology! www.greatexhibitionroadfestival.co.uk www.imperial.ac.uk/institute-of... immprove.ac.uk

Home - The Great Exhibition Road Festival

The Great Exhibition Road Festival is an annual celebration of science and the arts in South Kensington, London.

greatexhibitionroadfestival.co.uk

Extensive Intra-host evolution and T cell escape by SARS-CoV-2 in a 2.5-year persistent infection of an immunocompromised host https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.28.25328480v1

We also have two new students, Priya and Nistha. Priya will be using wet and dry lab work to identify conserved T cell targets in HCoVs for vaccine design, and Nishtha will be studying how varied inhaled vaccines stimulate innate immunity and effects on T cell responses (3/3)

We're proud to host Dr Xiuyuan Lu from Osaka University as part of the IIT & IFReC exchange programme. She comes with great skills in analysing T cell vaccination responses. We're looking forward to her upcoming talk and of course future collaboration! (2/3) #UCL #IFReC #vaccine

Standing room only our recent lab meeting! The group is growing fast, and lots of great science will surely come soon! (1/3)

(2/2) My final thought for the day, is that from mechanistic insights or enhancing and developing medicines, it’s exciting to see quantitative research taking increasing space in immunology. Let’s keep the momentum going! Postdoc Peter, signing off. #qimmunoday

(1/2) Another successful #qimmuno day has drawn to a close, but discussions continue in the pub around the corner! Congrats to the organising committee @qimmuno.bsky.social for an excellent day and to all the speakers for engaging talks.

(3/3) Xiaowen Chen was the final presenter, and presented novel research into how we can infer resource competition from dynamic abundance data. A very interesting topic, which has some cool potential overlaps with T and B cell competition for antigens and/or cytokines. Now for posters!

(2/3) Pebs Edwards presented some interesting data on the TCR repertoire in patients with lynch syndrome. A personal highlight for me was the 2 year persistence of neo-antigen clonotypes with apparent subsequent reactivation in at least one patient.

(1/2) Final set of talks now. Aubin Ramon started by describing his work to develop NanoMelt for nanobody thermostability assessment. The model uses ensemble learning on just 640 sequences, but accurately predicted Tm in a selection of nanobodies with at least 30% distance from the training set.

(2/2) Alastar Phelan then spoke about his mathematical modelling approach to enhance signal detection in dual pulse nucleoside labelling experiments for improving cell cycle analysis. Both speakers showcased their work really well, armed with only a pen and whiteboard! #qimmunoday

(1/2) A nice, unique feature of these days is the whiteboard talks. Michael Schneider went first and gave a nice explanation of how he is augmenting structure enhanced language models by improving MLM with intelligent token masking and space filling curves.

(3/3) Alexis Farman discussed his mathematical models for CAR T cell migration conditions in a microfluidics device, focussing on chemoattractant availability. An interesting tidbit to finish on, where optimisation of receptor affinity was discussed, overlapping nicely with Pietro’s talk.

(2/3) Constantin Ahlmann-Eltze showcased impressive work on assembling an atlas of T cells in precancerous samples. They developed the R packages treelabel and Shinytreelabel, which showed GITR+ Tregs are enriched in several precancerous samples, suggesting avenues for future treatments

(1/3) Session 2 followed on with engaging talks. Pietro Sormanni discussed his group’s work on utilising ML to develop and enhance AIRR based therapeutics. Great to see this ML work backed up with experimental analysis. Work with industrial partners promises to produce real benefits for patients.