Flinders University researchers, along with international experts, have discovered that PF4 antibodies causing VITT after adenoviral vector-based COVID-19 vaccination share molecular signatures identical to those found in similar cases. to natural infection by an adenovirus. This discovery, using a new approach developed at Flinders, has significant implications for understanding genetic risk factors and improving future vaccine development.
New research has shown that dangerous PF4 antibodies involved in vaccine-induced thrombosis (VITT) and similar disorders linked to cold infections share identical molecular structures, highlighting implications for future vaccine development and disease management.
New research from Flinders University and global specialists deepens our knowledge of vaccine-induced immune thrombocytopenia and thrombosis (VITT). At the height of COVID-19 In 2021, VITT was recognized as a new disease linked to adenoviral vector-based vaccines, particularly the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.
VITT was found to be caused by an unusually dangerous blood autoantibody directed against a protein called platelet factor 4 (or PF4). In separate research conducted in 2023, researchers from Canada, North America, Germany and Italy described a virtually identical disorder with the same PF4 antibody that was fatal in some cases after natural adenovirus infection (common cold).
Flinders University researchers Dr Jing Jing Wang and Flinders Professor Tom Gordon, head of immunology at SA Pathology in South Australia, conducted a previous study in 2022, which deciphered the molecular code of the PF4 antibody and identified a genetic risk factor linked to an antibody gene called IGLV3.21*02.
Flinders University immunology researchers Dr Jing Jing Wang and Professor Tom Gordon. Credit: Flinders Foundation
Collaborative Efforts and Future Implications
Now, the Flinders group has collaborated with this international group of researchers to discover that PF4 antibodies in adenovirus infection-associated VITT and in classical adenoviral-vectored VITT share identical molecular fingerprints, or signatures.
The research will also have implications for improving vaccine development, says Flinders University researcher Dr Wang, first author of the new paper published in the eminent journal. New England Journal of Medicine.
“These results, using a completely new approach to targeting blood antibodies developed at Flinders University, indicate a common triggering factor on virus and the vaccine structures that initiate the pathological pF4 antibodies,” explains Professor Gordon.
“Indeed, the pathways of lethal antibody production in these disorders must be virtually identical and have similar genetic risk factors. Our results have an important clinical implication that lessons learned from VITT are applicable to rare cases of blood clotting after adenovirus infections (a common cold), as well as having implications for vaccine development,” he says.
Reference: “Antibody Fingerprints Linking Adenoviral Anti-PF4 Disorders” by Jing Jing Wang, Linda Schönborn, Theodore E. Warkentin, Tim Chataway, Leonie Grosse, Paolo Simioni, Stephan Moll, Andreas Greinacher and Tom P. Gordon, May 15, 2024, New England Journal of Medicine.
DOI: 10.1056/NEJMc2402592
The research was supported by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) and a service contract from the European Medicines Agency. Dr. Schönborn was supported by the ASH Global Research Award of the American Society of Hematology and by the Gerhard Domagk Research Program of the Medical University of Greifswald. Dr Wang was supported by a Flinders Foundation Health Start-Up Grant.
News Source : scitechdaily.com
Gn Health
