{"doi":"10.3390/v14061265","title":"High and Sustained Ex Vivo Frequency but Altered Phenotype of SARS-CoV-2-Specific CD4+ T-Cells in an Anti-CD20-Treated Patient with Prolonged COVID-19","abstract":"Here, we longitudinally assessed the ex vivo frequency and phenotype of SARS-CoV-2 membrane protein (aa145–164) epitope-specific CD4+ T-cells of an anti-CD20-treated patient with prolonged viral positivity in direct comparison to an immunocompetent patient through an MHC class II DRB1*11:01 Tetramer analysis. We detected a high and stable SARS-CoV-2 membrane-specific CD4+ T-cell response in both patients, with higher frequencies of virus-specific CD4+ T-cells in the B-cell-depleted patient. However, we found an altered virus-specific CD4+ T-cell memory phenotype in the B-cell-depleted patient that was skewed towards late differentiated memory T-cells, as well as reduced frequencies of SARS-CoV-2-specific CD4+ T-cells with CD45RA− CXCR5+ PD-1+ circulating T follicular helper cell (cTFH) phenotype. Furthermore, we observed a delayed contraction of CD127− virus-specific effector cells. The expression of the co-inhibitory receptors TIGIT and LAG-3 fluctuated on the virus-specific CD4+ T-cells of the patient, but were associated with the inflammation markers IL-6 and CRP. Our findings indicate that, despite B-cell depletion and a lack of B-cell—T-cell interaction, a robust virus-specific CD4+ T-cell response can be primed that helps to control the viral replication, but which is not sufficient to fully abrogate the infection.","journal":"Viruses","year":2022,"id":283588,"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":6,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9561,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":960407,"name":"Maximilian Knapp","orcid":"0000-0002-9554-5067","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":960893,"name":"Robin Woost","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":664294,"name":"Sophia Schulte","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":960894,"name":"Silke Kummer","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":450495,"name":"Christin Ackermann","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":960408,"name":"Claudia Beisel","orcid":"0000-0002-4905-4646","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":663701,"name":"Sven Peine","orcid":"0000-0002-6365-9916","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":663702,"name":"Alexandra M. Johansson","orcid":"0000-0003-4779-4648","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":281006,"name":"William W. Kwok","orcid":"0000-0003-4843-4599","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":499665,"name":"Thomas Günther","orcid":"0000-0001-9650-0218","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":28472,"name":"Nicole Fischer","orcid":"0000-0001-7401-9271","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":450496,"name":"Melanie Wittner","orcid":null,"position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":960409,"name":"Marylyn M. Addo","orcid":"0000-0003-2836-9224","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":571383,"name":"Samuel Huber","orcid":"0000-0001-9325-8227","position":14,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":449503,"name":"Julian Schulze zur Wiesch","orcid":"0000-0002-5033-1938","position":15,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":960406,"name":"Leon Cords","orcid":"0000-0003-1340-8817","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":91,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:29:28.452697Z","pmid":"35746736","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":[]}