Shiv Pillai, MD, Ph.D., investigator in the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard and professor at Harvard Medical School (HMS), recently published a paper in Cell showing that high levels of some cytokines seen in COVID-19 patients, as part of a cytokine storm, may prevent the development of long-term immunity to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

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"We've seen a lot of studies suggesting that immunity in COVID-19 may not be durable because the antibodies decline over time," says Pillai. "More telling for us was that in patients with both mild as well as severe disease, asntibodies lacked a key structural feature that is a hallmark of the 'highest quality' antibodies in a normal immune response. By using our understanding of how two different types of immune cells normally collaborate to make the best antibodies, we were able to find a mechanism that could explain this lower-quality immune response in COVID-19 patients."

Pillai's group, working with Robert Padera, MD, Ph.D., associate professor at HMS, examined the spleens and lymph nodes of deceased COVID-19 patients and found that a lack of germinal centers, an essential part of a durable immune response.