Eagle News

Immune Monitoring COVID-19

Cells infected with SARS-CoV-2 are only visible to CD8+ T cell after virus proteins have been processed and presented by MHC class I molecules – and only then are the CD8+ T cell able to eradicate the infection. While antibodies against the COVID-19 virus are important to prevent or minimize infection, CD8+ T cells are responsible for clearing the virus from the body. Hence, the identification of peptides being presented by MHC class I is essential to:

  • Design potent vaccines eliciting a persistent response and
  • Using MHC class I tetramers to monitor cellular immune responses
  • Assessments of vaccine induced cellular immunity

immunAware allows researchers pursuing novel COVID-19 vaccines to generate tetramers and monitor immune responses. In the current pandemic scenario it is essential not to only focus on a few ALA allotypes; rather it is essential to be able to monitor as many allotypes as possible to ensure a novel vaccine targets a broad range of allotypes.

The easYmer reagents can also be used to validate the binding of predicted epitopes to further stratify the selection of potential COVID-19 vaccine targets.

As the US distributor for immunAware, Eagle Biosciences offer their extensive catalog of MHC tetramer products, including:

HLA-A*29:02 (WYMWLGARY) Class I Tetramer

See our full list of immunAware products here. If you have questions or for assistance with a specific product, please contact us.