Marina Delic-Sarac

• Giannakopoulou, Eirini Chrysovalantou; Lehander, Madeleine; Virding Culleton, Stina; Yang, Weiwen; Li, Yingqian & Kärpänen, Terhi Hannele [Show all 29 contributors for this article] (2023). A T cell receptor targeting a recurrent driver mutation in FLT3 mediates elimination of primary human acute myeloid leukemia in vivo. Nature Cancer. 4(10). doi: 10.1038/s43018-023-00642-8. Full text in Research Archive
• Meyer, Saskia; Blaas, Isaac; Bollineni, Ravi Chand; Delic-Sarac, Marina; Tran, Trung & Knetter, Cathrine [Show all 20 contributors for this article] (2023). Prevalent and immunodominant CD8 T cell epitopes are conserved in SARS-CoV-2 variants. Cell reports. ISSN 2211-1247. 42(1). doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2023.111995. Full text in Research Archive
• Riise, Jon; Meyer, Saskia; Blaas, Isaac; Chopra, Adity; Tran, Trung & Delic-Sarac, Marina [Show all 22 contributors for this article] (2022). Rituximab-treated patients with lymphoma develop strong CD8 T-cell responses following COVID-19 vaccination. British Journal of Haematology. ISSN 0007-1048. 197(6), p. 697–708. doi: 10.1111/bjh.18149. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  B-cell depletion induced by anti-cluster of differentiation 20 (CD20) monoclonal antibody (mAb) therapy of patients with lymphoma is expected to impair humoral responses to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) vaccination, but effects on CD8 T-cell responses are unknown. Here, we investigated humoral and CD8 T-cell responses following two vaccinations in patients with lymphoma undergoing anti-CD20-mAb therapy as single agent or in combination with chemotherapy or other anti-neoplastic agents during the last 9 months prior to inclusion, and in healthy age-matched blood donors. Antibody measurements showed that seven of 110 patients had antibodies to the receptor-binding domain of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein 3–6 weeks after the second dose of vaccination. Peripheral blood CD8 T-cell responses against prevalent human leucocyte antigen (HLA) class I SARS-CoV-2 epitopes were determined by peptide-HLA multimer analysis. Strong CD8 T-cell responses were observed in samples from 20/29 patients (69%) and 12/16 (75%) controls, with similar median response magnitudes in the groups and some of the strongest responses observed in patients. We conclude that despite the absence of humoral immune responses in fully SARS-CoV-2-vaccinated, anti-CD20-treated patients with lymphoma, their CD8 T-cell responses reach similar frequencies and magnitudes as for controls. Patients with lymphoma on B-cell depleting therapies are thus likely to benefit from current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines, and development of vaccines aimed at eliciting T-cell responses to non-Spike epitopes might provide improved protection.

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