Neutralization heterogeneity of United Kingdom and South-African SARS-CoV-2 variants in BNT162b2-vaccinated or convalescent COVID-19 healthcare workers

  1. Stéphane Marot
  2. Isabelle Malet
  3. Aude Jary
  4. Valentin Leducq
  5. Basma Abdi
  6. Elisa Teyssou
  7. Cathia Soulie
  8. Marc Wirden
  9. Christophe Rodriguez
  10. Slim Fourati
  11. Jean-Michel Pawlotsky
  12. David Boutolleau
  13. Sonia Burrel
  14. Vincent Calvez
  15. Anne-Geneviève Marcelin

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Abstract

There are concerns about neutralizing antibodies (NAb) potency against the newly emerged VOC202012/01 (UK) and 501Y.V2 (SA) SARS-CoV-2 variants in mRNA-vaccinated subjects and in recovered COVID-19 patients. We used a viral neutralization test with a strict 100% neutralizing criterion on UK and SA clinical isolates in comparison with a globally distributed D614G SARS-CoV-2 strain. In two doses BNT162b2-vaccinated healthcare workers (HCW), despite heterogeneity in neutralizing capacity against the three SARS-CoV-2 strains, most of the sera harbored at least a NAb titer ≥ 1:10 suggesting a certain humoral protection activity either on UK or SA variants. However, six months after mild forms of COVID-19, an important proportion of HCW displayed no neutralizing activity against SA strain. This result supports strong recommendations for vaccination of previously infected subjects.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.03.05.434089: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementConsent: Written informed consent for participation in this study was obtained from all participants.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Cell Line Authenticationnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Experimental Models: Cell Lines
    SentencesResources
    Viral stocks were generated and titrated by the limiting dilution assay allowing calculation of tissue culture infective dose 50% (TCID50) after one passage of isolates on Vero cells.
    Vero
    suggested: CLS Cat# 605372/p622_VERO, RRID:CVCL_0059)
    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    SARS-CoV-2 IgG immunoassay: SARS-CoV-2 anti-nucleocapsid (N) IgG were determined using a commercially available immunoassay kit (Alinity SARS-CoV-2 IgG assay, Abbott Laboratories) according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
    Abbott Laboratories
    suggested: None
    Statistical analysis: Difference in distribution of NAb titer between UK strain or SA strain with the D614G strain was performed with a two-tailed Mann-Whitney-U test in GraphPad Prism 6.0.
    GraphPad Prism
    suggested: (GraphPad Prism, RRID:SCR_002798)

    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: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    A limitation of our work is that we were not able to assess potential cellular response differences against the three strains in the vaccinated or convalescent groups although it has been described generation of a robust CD4+ and CD8+ responses against the Wuhan ancestral strain[11]. The long-term evaluation regarding the lasting of NAb induced by vaccination is needed to assess the durability of protection against SARS-CoV-2 variants.

    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.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2021.03.05.434089 on bioRxiv