{"doi":"10.17615/wn13-yt87","title":"Airway surveillance and lung viral control by memory T cells induced by COVID-19 mRNA vaccine","abstract":"Although SARS-CoV-2 evolution seeds a continuous stream of antibody-evasive viral variants, COVID-19 mRNA vaccines provide robust protection against severe disease and hospitalization. Here, we asked whether mRNA vaccine-induced memory T cells limits lung SARS-CoV-2 replication and severe disease. We show that mice and humans receiving booster BioNTech mRNA vaccine developed potent CD8 T-cell responses and show similar kinetics of expansion and contraction of granzyme B/perforin-expressing effector CD8 T cells. Both monovalent and bivalent mRNA vaccines elicited strong expansion of a heterogeneous pool of terminal effectors and memory precursor effector CD8 T cells in spleen, inguinal and mediastinal lymph nodes, pulmonary vasculature, and most surprisingly in the airways, suggestive of systemic and regional surveillance. Further, we document that: (1) CD8 T-cell memory persists in multiple tissues for >200 days; (2) following challenge with pathogenic SARS-CoV-2, circulating memory CD8 T cells rapidly extravasate to the lungs and promote expeditious viral clearance, by mechanisms that require CD4 T cell help; (3) adoptively transferred splenic memory CD8 T cells traffic to the airways, and promote lung SARS-CoV-2 clearance. These findings provide new insights into the critical role of memory T cells in preventing severe lung disease following breakthrough infections with antibody-evasive SARS-CoV-2 variants.","journal":"UNC Libraries","year":2023,"id":413696,"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":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9504,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":5952,"name":"Ralph S. Baric","orcid":"0000-0001-6827-8701","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":641889,"name":"Shinya Yamamoto","orcid":"0000-0003-2890-7256","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":380331,"name":"Ryuta Uraki","orcid":"0000-0003-0890-1922","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":504253,"name":"Sathish Kumar","orcid":"0000-0002-2598-7951","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":426891,"name":"M. Suresh","orcid":"0000-0003-1794-3358","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":641910,"name":"Hiroshi Yotsuyanagi","orcid":"0000-0001-7882-5262","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":641887,"name":"Michiko Koga","orcid":"0000-0002-3122-9735","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":105503,"name":"Boyd L. Yount","orcid":"0000-0002-6099-8429","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":504252,"name":"J. S. Mishra","orcid":"0000-0003-0835-3292","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":107110,"name":"Yoshihiro Kawaoka","orcid":"0000-0001-5061-8296","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":615259,"name":"Kiyoko Iwatsuki‐Horimoto","orcid":"0000-0002-8266-020X","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1080901,"name":"Hong-Tae Park","orcid":"0000-0003-3415-2339","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":504961,"name":"Hailey E. Bussan","orcid":"0000-0002-0961-7109","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":472653,"name":"Brock Kingstad-Bakke","orcid":"0000-0002-3124-4484","position":14,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":107104,"name":"Peter Halfmann","orcid":"0000-0002-1648-1625","position":15,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1080900,"name":"Thomas Cleven","orcid":"0000-0003-0796-5836","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":0,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:21:57.641539Z","pmid":null,"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":[]}