Leukemia

Lee Greenberger, PhD, chief scientific officer of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, discusses common questions about COVID-19 and vaccination from patients ...

What does that mean?” And then the next question was, “I have some, am I protected or not?” And the answer is [that] if you had if you had no detectable anti-spike antibodies, that definitely was a warning sign. We really need to do a better job of understanding that not only for the COVID situation, but in the future, we're going to have to understand when people respond, the amount that they responded, and are they getting a functional response? It's not only the amount of T cells or that you have T cells, but is it functional? We actually looked at T cells and asked, “Are you getting a T-cell response to the vaccination?” We looked in about 500 patients and did that analysis, and what we found is people can make T-cell responses. But the patients that have T-cell responses, even if they have low anti-spike levels, they might be protected. What are the key unresolved issues?