mRNA vaccine-induced T cells respond identically to SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern but differ in longevity and homing properties depending on prior infection status
- University of California, San Francisco, United States
- Gladstone Institute of Virology, United States
Abstract
While mRNA vaccines are proving highly efficacious against SARS-CoV-2, it is important to determine how booster doses and prior infection influence the immune defense they elicit, and whether they protect against variants. Focusing on the T cell response, we conducted a longitudinal study of infection-naïve and COVID-19 convalescent donors before vaccination and after their first and second vaccine doses, using a high-parameter CyTOF analysis to phenotype their SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells. Vaccine-elicited spike-specific T cells responded similarly to stimulation by spike epitopes from the ancestral, B.1.1.7 and B.1.351 variant strains, both in terms of cell numbers and phenotypes. In infection-naïve individuals, the second dose boosted the quantity and altered the phenotypic properties of SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells, while in convalescents the second dose changed neither. Spike-specific T cells from convalescent vaccinees differed strikingly from those of infection-naïve vaccinees, with phenotypic features suggesting superior long-term persistence and ability to home to the respiratory tract including the nasopharynx. These results provide reassurance that vaccine-elicited T cells respond robustly to emerging viral variants, confirm that convalescents may not need a second vaccine dose, and suggest that vaccinated convalescents may have more persistent nasopharynx-homing SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells compared to their infection-naïve counterparts.
Data availability
The original datasets are available through Dryad: https://doi.org/10.7272/Q60R9MMK
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mRNA vaccine-induced T cells respond identically to SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern but differ in longevity and homing properties depending on prior infection statusDryad Digital Repository, doi:10.7272/Q60R9MMK.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Sandler Foundation (Program for Breakthrough Biomedical Research)
- Nadia R Roan
Fast Grants (2164,2208,2160)
- Sulggi A Lee
- Nadia R Roan
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Human subjects: This study was approved by the University of California, San Francisco (IRB # 20-30588). All participants provided informed consent, and consent to publish, before participation.
Copyright
© 2021, Neidleman et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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mRNA vaccine-induced T cells respond identically to SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern but differ in longevity and homing properties depending on prior infection status
eLife 10:e72619.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.72619
