Immune memory cells are stored in bone marrow at one single cell: Study

The way vaccines function is by successfully generating immune cells with a lengthy lifespan--often for decades. These immune cells provide a barrier of defence that can stop or lessen re-infection as well as a memory that enables us to identify a previous invader like a virus and to eliminate it before it causes sickness. While the significance of these "long lived plasma cells" has long been understood, how and when they are produced after vaccination has remained a mystery. The antibody in our blood that serves as the barrier is manufactured by these cells. A research team led by Dr. Marcus Robinson and Professor David Tarlinton from Monash University's Immune Memory Laboratory, and published in the prestigious Science Immunology journal, has shown in real time how immune memory cells are stored in the bone marrow at around one single cell per hour for several weeks after immunization. The researchers used a genetic system in mice to map the gradual accumulation of these cells.