T cell and antibody kinetics delineate SARS-CoV-2 peptides mediating long-term immune responses in COVID-19 convalescent individuals.

Abstract

Long-term immunological memory to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is crucial for the development of population-level immunity, which is the aim of vaccination approaches. Reports on rapidly decreasing antibody titers have led to questions regarding the efficacy of humoral immunity alone. The relevance of T cell memory after coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) remains unclear. Here, we investigated SARS-CoV-2 antibody and T cell responses in matched samples of COVID-19 convalescent individuals up to 6 months after infection. Longitudinal analysis revealed decreasing and stable spike- and nucleocapsid-specific antibody responses, respectively. In contrast, functional T cell responses remained robust, and even increased, in both frequency and intensity. Single peptide mapping of T cell diversity over time identified open reading frame-independent, dominant T cell epitopes mediating long-term SARS-CoV-2 T cell responses. Identification of these epitopes may be fundamental for COVID-19 vaccine design.

• Authors: Tatjana Bilich, Annika Nelde, Jonas S Heitmann, Yacine Maringer, Malte Roerden, Jens Bauer, Jonas Rieth, Marcel Wacker, Andreas Peter, Sebastian Hörber, David Rachfalski, Melanie Märklin, Stefan Stevanović, Hans-Georg Rammensee, Helmut R Salih, Juliane S Walz
• Journal: Science translational medicine (Sci Transl Med) Vol. 13 Issue 590 (04 21 2021) ISSN: 1946-6242 [Electronic] United States
• PMID: 33723016 (Publication Type: Journal Article, Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't)
• Copyright: Copyright © 2021 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY).

Chemical References

• Antibodies, Viral
• Coronavirus Nucleocapsid Proteins
• Epitopes, T-Lymphocyte
• Immunodominant Epitopes
• Phosphoproteins
• Spike Glycoprotein, Coronavirus
• nucleocapsid phosphoprotein, SARS-CoV-2
• spike protein, SARS-CoV-2

Topics

• Antibodies, Viral (blood, immunology)
• COVID-19 (immunology)
• Convalescence
• Coronavirus Nucleocapsid Proteins (immunology)
• Epitopes, T-Lymphocyte (immunology)
• Humans
• Immunodominant Epitopes (immunology)
• Immunologic Memory
• Kinetics
• Peptide Mapping
• Phosphoproteins (immunology)
• SARS-CoV-2 (immunology)
• Spike Glycoprotein, Coronavirus (immunology)
• T-Lymphocytes (immunology)