Double Pfizer vax could give some solid protection against Omicron

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2022-01-17 17:26

International

Immunity after the Pfizer COVID vaccine seems to mostly hold up against the Omicron variant, according to international researchers. The team noticed that severe disease seemed rare among those who had contracted Omicron after being double-vaxxed with Pfizer. This implied some vaccine-induced immunity, despite the new variant, so the team looked at how T cells (a type of immune cell that remembers specific viruses) responded to Omicron compared to the original strain of SARS-CoV-2. They found that T cells reacted in a similar way to the Omicron variant as they did with the original strain of SARS-CoV-2, implying that our immune response after mRNA vaccination remains largely intact.

Media release

From: Springer Nature

Ancestral SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells cross-recognize Omicron

Abstract: The emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 variant-of-concern Omicron (B.1.1.529) has destabilized global efforts to control the impact of COVID-19. Recent data have suggested that B.1.1.529 can readily infect people with naturally acquired or vaccine-induced immunity, facilitated in some cases by viral escape from antibodies that neutralize ancestral SARS-CoV-2. However, severe disease appears to be relatively uncommon in such individuals, highlighting a potential role for other components of the adaptive immune system. We report here that SARS-CoV-2 spike-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T cells induced by prior infection and, more extensively, by mRNA vaccination provide comprehensive heterologous immune reactivity against B.1.1.529. Pairwise comparisons across groups further revealed that SARS-CoV-2 spike-reactive CD4+ and CD8+ T cells exhibited similar functional attributes, memory distributions, and phenotypic traits in response to the ancestral strain or B.1.1.529. Our data indicate that established SARS-CoV-2 spike-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T cell responses, especially after mRNA vaccination, remain largely intact against B.1.1.529.

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Journal/
conference: Nature Medicine

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Karolinska Institutet, Sweden

Funder: This project was supported by grants from the SciLifeLab National COVID-19 Research Program, financed by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, the Swedish Research Council, Nordstjernan AB, Region Stockholm, and the Karolinska Institutet. J.N. was supported by an EMBO Postdoctoral Fellowship (ALTF 1062-2020). D.A.P. was supported by the National Institute for Health Research (COV-LT2-0041). A.C.K. was supported by the Swedish Research Council (2020-02033), the Centrum för Innovativ Medicin (2019-0495), and the Karolinska Insitutet (2019-00931). M.B. was supported by the Swedish Research Council, the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, the Karolinska Institutet, the Swedish Society of Medicine, the Swedish Cancer Society, the Swedish Childhood Cancer Fund, the Åke Wibergs Stiftelse, and the Jonas Söderquist Stiftelse. This project was also supported in part by federal funds from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, under contract no. 75N93021C00016 (to A.S.) and contract no. 75N9301900065 (to D.W. and A.S.). We thank the COVAXID clinical study group, Piotr Nowak, Edvard Smith, Per Ljungman, Stephan Mielke, Gunnar Söderdahl and Ola Blennow, for their involvement in the COVAXID study and recruitment of vaccinated healthy study subjects. A.S. is a consultant for Gritstone Bio, Flow Pharma, Arcturus Therapeutics, ImmunoScape, CellCarta, Avalia, Moderna, Fortress, and Repertoire, and the La Jolla Institute has filed patents to protect various aspects of the T cell epitope and vaccine design work. S.A. has received honoraria from Gilead, AbbVie, MSD, and Biogen and research grants from Gilead and AbbVie. M.B. is a consultant for Oxford Immunotec. The other authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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