Shane Crotty reviews durability and mechanisms of immune memory across vaccine types

Shane Crotty delivered an expert lecture, published by Cell Press on YouTube, reviewing how different vaccines induce and maintain immune memory. He cited smallpox vaccine memory B cells persisting over 60 years with antibodies detectable 88 years after vaccination, yellow fever live vaccine CD8 T cell data showing division roughly every 1.5 years by deuterium labelling, and inactivated coronavirus vaccines producing B cell memory 10 to 100 times lower than mRNA vaccines or infection. He noted gaps including lack of direct quantification of antigen-binding memory cells and insufficient longitudinal data.