{"doi":"10.1101/2020.07.09.194027","title":"Severely ill COVID-19 patients display augmented functional properties in SARS-CoV-2-reactive CD8 <sub>+</sub> T cells","abstract":"ABSTRACT The molecular properties of CD8 + T cells that respond to SARS-CoV-2 infection are not fully known. Here, we report on the single-cell transcriptomes of &gt;80,000 virus-reactive CD8 + T cells from 39 COVID-19 patients and 10 healthy subjects. COVID-19 patients segregated into two groups based on whether the dominant CD8 + T cell response to SARS-CoV-2 was ‘exhausted’ or not. SARS-CoV-2-reactive cells in the exhausted subset were increased in frequency and displayed lesser cytotoxicity and inflammatory features in COVID-19 patients with mild compared to severe illness. In contrast, SARS-CoV-2-reactive cells in the non-exhausted subsets from patients with severe disease showed enrichment of transcripts linked to co-stimulation, pro-survival NF-κB signaling, and anti-apoptotic pathways, suggesting the generation of robust CD8 + T cell memory responses in patients with severe COVID-19 illness. CD8 + T cells reactive to influenza and respiratory syncytial virus from healthy subjects displayed polyfunctional features. Cells with such features were mostly absent in SARS-CoV-2 responsive cells from both COVID-19 patients and healthy controls non-exposed to SARS-CoV-2. Overall, our single-cell analysis revealed substantial diversity in the nature of CD8 + T cells responding to SARS-CoV-2.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2020,"id":120506,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":10,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9402,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":7247,"name":"Ciro Ramírez-Suástegui","orcid":"0000-0001-8126-710X","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":110377,"name":"Vicente Fajardo","orcid":"0000-0002-1578-7438","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":110378,"name":"Serena Chee","orcid":"0000-0001-7244-9876","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":110376,"name":"Benjamin J. Meckiff","orcid":"0000-0002-6930-5545","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":110380,"name":"Hayley Simon","orcid":"0000-0002-7857-3795","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":110382,"name":"Emanuela Pelosi","orcid":"0000-0003-4970-1388","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":110383,"name":"Grégory Seumois","orcid":"0000-0002-8164-6852","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":45041,"name":"Ferhat Ay","orcid":"0000-0002-0708-6914","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":110385,"name":"Pandurangan Vijayanand","orcid":"0000-0001-7067-9723","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":110384,"name":"Christian H. Ottensmeier","orcid":"0000-0003-3619-1657","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":110379,"name":"Anthony Kusnadi","orcid":"0000-0002-6172-389X","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":72,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:14:33.640077Z","pmid":"32676602","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}