Immune responses against SARS-CoV-2 variants after heterologous and homologous ChAdOx1 nCoV-19/BNT162b2 vaccination

  1. Joana Barros-Martins
  2. Swantje I. Hammerschmidt
  3. Anne Cossmann
  4. Ivan Odak
  5. Metodi V. Stankov
  6. Gema Morillas Ramos
  7. Alexandra Dopfer-Jablonka
  8. Annika Heidemann
  9. Christiane Ritter
  10. Michaela Friedrichsen
  11. Christian Schultze-Florey
  12. Inga Ravens
  13. Stefanie Willenzon
  14. Anja Bubke
  15. Jasmin Ristenpart
  16. Anika Janssen
  17. George Ssebyatika
  18. Günter Bernhardt
  19. Jan Münch
  20. Markus Hoffmann
  21. Stefan Pöhlmann
  22. Thomas Krey
  23. Berislav Bošnjak
  24. Reinhold Förster
  25. Georg M. N. Behrens

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Abstract

Currently approved viral vector-based and mRNA-based vaccine approaches against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) consider only homologous prime-boost vaccination. After reports of thromboembolic events, several European governments recommended using AstraZeneca’s ChAdOx1-nCov-19 (ChAd) only in individuals older than 60 years, leaving millions of already ChAd-primed individuals with the decision to receive either a second shot of ChAd or a heterologous boost with mRNA-based vaccines. However, such combinations have not been tested so far. We used Hannover Medical School’s COVID-19 Contact Study cohort of healthcare professionals to monitor ChAd-primed immune responses before and 3 weeks after booster with ChAd ( n  = 32) or BioNTech/Pfizer’s BNT162b2 ( n  = 55). Although both vaccines boosted prime-induced immunity, BNT162b2 induced significantly higher frequencies of spike-specific CD4 + and CD8 + T cells and, in particular, high titers of neutralizing antibodies against the B.1.1.7, B.1.351 and P.1 variants of concern of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2.

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  1. Version published to 10.1038/s41591-021-01449-9
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.06.01.21258172: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Ethicsnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.06.01.21258172v1 on medRxiv
  4. Version published to 10.21203/rs.3.rs-580444/v1 on Research Square