Omicron breakthrough infection drives cross-variant neutralization and memory B cell formation

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Abstract

Omicron is the evolutionarily most distinct SARS-CoV-2 variant (VOC) to date and displays multiple amino acid alterations located in neutralizing antibody sites of the spike (S) protein. We report here that Omicron breakthrough infection in BNT162b2 vaccinated individuals results in strong neutralizing activity not only against Omicron, but also broadly against previous SARS-CoV-2 VOCs and against SARS-CoV-1. We found that Omicron breakthrough infection mediates a robust B cell recall response, and primarily expands preformed memory B cells that recognize epitopes shared broadly by different variants, rather than inducing new B cells against strictly Omicron-specific epitopes. Our data suggest that, despite imprinting of the immune response by previous vaccination, the preformed B cell memory pool has sufficient plasticity for being refocused and quantitatively remodeled by exposure to heterologous S protein, thus allowing effective neutralization of variants that evade a previously established neutralizing antibody response.

One Sentence Summary

Breakthrough infection in individuals double- and triple-vaccinated with BNT162b2 drives cross-variant neutralization and memory B cell formation.

Article activity feed

  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2022.04.01.486695: (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

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Materials are available from the authors under a material transfer agreement with BioNTech.
    BioNTech
    suggested: None

    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: We found the following clinical trial numbers in your paper:

    IdentifierStatusTitle
    NCT04380701Active, not recruitingA Trial Investigating the Safety and Effects of Four BNT162 …
    NCT04949490Active, not recruitingA Trial Investigating the Safety and Effects of One or Two A…


    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.


    About SciScore

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