Vaccines elicit highly conserved cellular immunity to SARS-CoV-2 Omicron

Jinyan Liu, Abishek Chandrashekar, Daniel Sellers, Julia Barrett, Catherine Jacob-Dolan, Michelle Lifton, Katherine McMahan, Michaela Sciacca, Haley VanWyk, Cindy Wu, Jingyou Yu, Ai-ris Y. Collier and Dan H. Barouch ()
Additional contact information
Jinyan Liu: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Abishek Chandrashekar: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Daniel Sellers: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Julia Barrett: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Catherine Jacob-Dolan: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Michelle Lifton: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Katherine McMahan: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Michaela Sciacca: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Haley VanWyk: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Cindy Wu: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Jingyou Yu: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Ai-ris Y. Collier: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Dan H. Barouch: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

Nature, 2022, vol. 603, issue 7901, 493-496

Abstract: Abstract The highly mutated SARS-CoV-2 Omicron (B.1.1.529) variant has been shown to evade a substantial fraction of neutralizing antibody responses elicited by current vaccines that encode the WA1/2020 spike protein1. Cellular immune responses, particularly CD8+ T cell responses, probably contribute to protection against severe SARS-CoV-2 infection2–6. Here we show that cellular immunity induced by current vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 is highly conserved to the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron spike protein. Individuals who received the Ad26.COV2.S or BNT162b2 vaccines demonstrated durable spike-specific CD8+ and CD4+ T cell responses, which showed extensive cross-reactivity against both the Delta and the Omicron variants, including in central and effector memory cellular subpopulations. Median Omicron spike-specific CD8+ T cell responses were 82–84% of the WA1/2020 spike-specific CD8+ T cell responses. These data provide immunological context for the observation that current vaccines still show robust protection against severe disease with the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant despite the substantially reduced neutralizing antibody responses7,8.

Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04465-y

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