Discover immunityPub Date : 2026-01-01Epub Date: 2026-07-10DOI: 10.1007/s44368-026-00030-1
Jesse M Hall, Justin B Defalco, Purnima Dubey
{"title":"CD4+ T-cell immunity to <i>Bordetella pertussis</i>.","authors":"Jesse M Hall, Justin B Defalco, Purnima Dubey","doi":"10.1007/s44368-026-00030-1","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s44368-026-00030-1","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Despite widespread immunization, <i>Bordetella pertussis</i> (<i>B. pertussis</i>) cases are resurging worldwide, prompting renewed interest in understanding the key mechanisms that underlie protective immunity. Similar to natural infection, immunization with whole-cell pertussis vaccines (wPV) generates long-lasting T<sub>H</sub>1/T<sub>H</sub>17 CD4 + T-cell responses that protect against <i>B. pertussis</i> infection. Additionally, wPV immunization generates robust tissue-resident memory T-cell responses (T<sub>RM</sub>) that limit both pertussis disease and transmission. In contrast, acellular pertussis vaccines (aPV) generate short-lived T<sub>H</sub>2-polarized immune responses that confer protection against severe disease but do not prevent <i>B. pertussis</i> colonization or transmission. Furthermore, the circulation of clinical strains with varied expression of aPV antigens also highlights the need for next-generation pertussis vaccines. Thus, coordinated innate and adaptive immune responses at the site of infection are required to effectively protect against <i>B. pertussis</i> colonization and persistence. This review integrates our current knowledge of natural and vaccine mediated T-cell immunity from both animal models and human studies to guide the development of improved pertussis vaccines capable of combating the resurgence of pertussis.</p>","PeriodicalId":524139,"journal":{"name":"Discover immunity","volume":"3 1","pages":"12"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13390253/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148564500","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}