Evidence of antigenic imprinting in sequential Sarbecovirus immunization

Lv, Huibin; So, Ray T. Y.; Yuan, Meng; Liu, Hejun; Lee, Chang-Chun D.; Yip, Garrick K.; Ng, Wilson W.; Wilson, Ian A.; Peiris, Malik; Wu, Nicholas C.; Mok, Chris K. P.

Antigenic imprinting, which describes the bias of antibody response due to previous immune history, can influence vaccine effectiveness and has been reported in different viruses. Give that COVID-19 vaccine development is currently a major focus of the world, there is a lack of understanding of how background immunity influence antibody response to SARS-CoV-2. This study provides evidence for antigenic imprinting in Sarbecovirus, which is the subgenus that SARS-CoV-2 belongs to. Specifically, we sequentially immunized mice with two antigenically distinct Sarbecovirus strains, namely SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2. We found that the neutralizing antibodies triggered by the sequentially immunization are dominantly against the one that is used for priming. Given that the impact of the background immunity on COVID-19 is still unclear, our results will provide important insights into the pathogenesis of this disease as well as COVID-19 vaccination strategy.