Chemokine Receptor Inhibitor vMIP-II Promoting Lymphocytes in COVID-19 Patients and Its Related Mechanism In Vitro

Abstract

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) accompanies severe immune injury as well as a decrease and overactivation of T lymphocytes. We observed that vMIP-Ⅱ, a broad-spectrum chemokine receptor inhibitor, could improve the lymphocyte decrease of COVID-19. Comparisons of T cell populations in PBMCs showed that the effects of vMIP-II on the subsets of T cells and cytokine secretion stimulated by SARS-CoV-2 S protein were the same as those in the asymptomatic infection group: the proportion of CD8+TCM cells in the vMIP-II treatment and asymptomatic groups was significantly higher than that in the symptomatic control group. Differential gene expression of effector CD8+ T cells suggested that vMIP-II inhibits multiple chemokine receptors and related signal pathway and strengthens their stem proliferating capacity. Thus, vMIP-II reconstitutes cellular immunity lost due to acute infection of SARS-CoV-2 by modulating effector CD8+ T cells to produce more TCM cells.