Reduced binding and neutralization of infection- and vaccine-induced antibodies to the B.1.351 (South African) SARS-CoV-2 variant

  1. Venkata Viswanadh Edara
  2. Carson Norwood
  3. Katharine Floyd
  4. Lilin Lai
  5. Meredith E. Davis-Gardner
  6. William H. Hudson
  7. Grace Mantus
  8. Lindsay E. Nyhoff
  9. Max W. Adelman
  10. Rebecca Fineman
  11. Shivan Patel
  12. Rebecca Byram
  13. Dumingu Nipuni Gomes
  14. Garett Michael
  15. Hayatu Abdullahi
  16. Nour Beydoun
  17. Bernadine Panganiban
  18. Nina McNair
  19. Kieffer Hellmeister
  20. Jamila Pitts
  21. Joy Winters
  22. Jennifer Kleinhenz
  23. Jacob Usher
  24. James B. O’Keefe
  25. Anne Piantadosi
  26. Jesse J. Waggoner
  27. Ahmed Babiker
  28. David S. Stephens
  29. Evan J. Anderson
  30. Srilatha Edupuganti
  31. Nadine Rouphael
  32. Rafi Ahmed
  33. Jens Wrammert
  34. Mehul S. Suthar

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Abstract

The emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants with mutations in the spike protein is raising concerns about the efficacy of infection- or vaccine-induced antibodies to neutralize these variants. We compared antibody binding and live virus neutralization of sera from naturally infected and spike mRNA vaccinated individuals against a circulating SARS-CoV-2 B.1 variant and the emerging B.1.351 variant. In acutely-infected (5-19 days post-symptom onset), convalescent COVID-19 individuals (through 8 months post-symptom onset) and mRNA-1273 vaccinated individuals (day 14 post-second dose), we observed an average 4.3-fold reduction in antibody titers to the B.1.351-derived receptor binding domain of the spike protein and an average 3.5-fold reduction in neutralizing antibody titers to the SARS-CoV-2 B.1.351 variant as compared to the B.1 variant (spike D614G). However, most acute and convalescent sera from infected and all vaccinated individuals neutralize the SARS-CoV-2 B.1.351 variant, suggesting that protective immunity is retained against COVID-19.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.02.20.432046: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.

    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.

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    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2021.02.20.432046v1 on bioRxiv