Negligible impact of SARS-CoV-2 variants on CD4(+) and CD8(+) T cell reactivity in COVID-19 exposed donors and vaccinees.

Tarke, Alison; Sidney, John; Methot, Nils; Zhang, Yun; Dan, Jennifer M.; Goodwin, Benjamin; Rubiro, Paul; Sutherland, Aaron; da Silva Antunes, Ricardo; Frazier, April; Rawlings, Stephen A.; Smith, Davey M.; Peters, Bjoern; Scheuermann, Richard H.; Weiskopf, Daniela; Crotty, Shane; Grifoni, Alba; Sette, Alessandro

The emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants highlighted the need to better understand adaptive immune responses to this virus. It is important to address whether also CD4+ and CD8+ T cell responses are affected, because of the role they play in disease resolution and modulation of COVID-19 disease severity. Here we performed a comprehensive analysis of SARS-CoV-2-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T cell responses from COVID-19 convalescent subjects recognizing the ancestral strain, compared to variant lineages B.1.1.7, B.1.351, P.1, and CAL.20C as well as recipients of the Moderna (mRNA-1273) or Pfizer/BioNTech (BNT162b2) COVID-19 vaccines. Similarly, we demonstrate that the sequences of the vast majority of SARS-CoV-2 T cell epitopes are not affected by the mutations found in the variants analyzed. Overall, the results demonstrate that CD4+ and CD8+ T cell responses in convalescent COVID-19 subjects or COVID-19 mRNA vaccinees are not substantially affected by mutations found in the SARS-CoV-2 variants.