Peptide vaccine, cytotoxic T cells (CTL)

Infection Department of Immunology

As of April 2023, COVID-19 has not yet stopped declining, and further measures are necessary. Furthermore, future discussions may be required regarding whether to continue using the currently used mRNA as a booster vaccine in the future from the perspective of side effects. Therefore, new measures regarding booster vaccines are considered necessary.
Therefore, we are currently conducting detailed analysis of cytotoxic T cells (CTLs) from COVID-19 patients to identify CTL epitopes that may be able to eliminate SARS-CoV-2, and to examine whether these epitopes can be applied to a vaccine.

What's special about this is that the CTL epitopes were not derived from conventional in silico analysis, but from CTL analysis of patients who had recovered from COVID-19.

Since this is a CTL epitope that has already been shown to function predominantly in humans, it is believed that it can be applied to the development of effective vaccines.

In patients with reduced antibody production (those undergoing treatment such as B cell depletion), it is possible to protect against infection by inducing CTLs.
In addition, because it is capable of inducing the minimum level of immunity required for protection against infection, it is believed that it can contribute as a safe additional vaccine with no side effects.

It may become the cornerstone of preventive strategies for various viral respiratory infections.

Application number: Patent application No. 2021-024266, Name of invention: SARS-CoV-2-specific CTL inducer and SARS-CoV-2-specific CTL epitope, Application date: February 18, 2021

1. Nat Commun. 2022 Dec 16;13(1):7063 doi:10.1038/s41467-022-34655-1.