Our goal is to find the best way to stimulate the immune system to fight the COVID-19 virus. We have found a way to use blood stem cells to produce a part of the immune system called dendritic cells. The dendritic cells are used in a dish (i.e. “in vitro”) to process the SARS-CoV-2 virus into smaller pieces called peptides which can stimulate the immune system and be used as vaccines against the virus. During the year of grant support we have done extensive testing of the system and found that the dendritic cells that are produced from stem cells can indeed can be used to identify rare immune cells (T cells) that attack the virus. Our goal now is to increase the efficiency of our dendritic cell system so that it can be used to develop vaccines in the future.