Dr. Megan Levings and her team have recently published two papers on the very different functions and uses of regulatory T cells (Tregs). Tregs are immune cells that help to rein in immune responses to ensure that they don’t go too far and begin harming healthy tissues in their pursuit of foreign invaders.
COVID-19 could become a seasonal virus showing up each year with other coronaviruses, according to a B.C. vaccine expert.
Dr. Manish Sadarangani, director of the Vaccine Evaluation Centre at B.C. Children’s Hospital, said there were four coronaviruses that usually circulate each year in B.C. that all lead to mild colds. Because symptoms are mild, no one had tried to create a vaccine for them, Sadarangani said.
The two severe forms of coronavirus that existed before COVID-19 — SARS and MERS — were not wide spread and so no mass vaccine was created.
“While people have been working on the MERS and SARS coronaviruses, none of them have ended up in widespread use,” he said. “We are really starting a little bit from the beginning.”
Read more of this interview with Manish Sadarangani in the Vancouver Sun.
