Grandstand. Vaccines, messenger RNA, immunity, immunotherapy: here we are with the Covid plunged back into the heart of a little-known medical discipline, immunology. This discipline had already been at the forefront when the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) destroyed the immune system of patients by destroying their lymphocyte cells.
Patients measured the severity of the disease by the number of T4, these lymphocytes essential to the response against the virus. The more the T4 count dropped, the more the disease was at an advanced stage and the more the patient would be vulnerable to multiple other diseases qualified as “opportunistic”. We did not die and we do not die today directly from AIDS.
We were dying and still dying from the progressive destruction by the AIDS virus of the body’s capacity to resist other illnesses. For patients who have access to treatment, AIDS is now effectively combated by protecting the immune system against the attack of the virus.
The importance of immune regulation
Dysregulation of the immune system, a defense weapon against viruses and bacteria, is the basis of a large number of diseases: too much immunity can destroy or alter the functioning of certain tissues in our body and contributes, for example, to multiple sclerosis , not enough immunity makes us vulnerable to infectious diseases but can also promote the emergence and spread of cancers.
Thus, the regulation of our immune response is an essential issue from birth. Vaccines given to infants help educate their immunity so that they can better defend themselves against infectious diseases with potentially serious complications in the past. It is also known to treat patients suffering from a disease which escapes the immune response with immunotherapy.
The Nobel Prize in Medicine awarded in 2018 to the Japanese Tasuku Honjo and the American James Allison had distinguished work that would not only allow to “boost” or “strengthen” the immune system but to modulate it to use it for example in the fight against certain cancers.
60 years of messenger RNA
The most recent treatments called CAR-T (Chimeric Antigenic Receptor-T) are, for example, a cellular immunotherapy strategy which aims to fight leukemia and cancers by relying on the patient’s own immune system: these same T lymphocytes and, after genetic modification, they are reinjected into the patient to eliminate leukemic cells that these lymphocytes have “learned” to recognize.
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