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

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.

Source: Science Translational Medicine - April 21, 2021 Category: Biomedical Science Authors: Bilich, T., Nelde, A., Heitmann, J. S., Maringer, Y., Roerden, M., Bauer, J., Rieth, J., Wacker, M., Peter, A., Hörber, S., Rachfalski, D., Märklin, M., Stevanovic, S., Rammensee, H.-G., Salih, H. R., Walz, J. S. Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research