Warning: This is a preliminary report that has not been peer-reviewed. It should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or be reported in news media as established information.

Bowen JE, Walls AC, Joshi A, Sprouse KR, Stewart C, Tortorici MA, Franko NM, Logue JK, Mazzitelli IG, Tiles SW, Ahmed K, Shariq A, Snell G, Iqbal NT, Geffner J, Bandera A, Gori A, Grifantini R, Chu HY, Van Voorhis WC, Corti D, Veesler D

Numerous safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines have been developed that utilize various delivery technologies and engineering strategies. The influence of the SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) glycoprotein conformation on antibody responses induced by vaccination or infection in humans remains unknown. To address this question, we compared plasma antibodies elicited by six globally-distributed ...

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vaccines or infection and observed markedly higher binding titers for vaccines encoding a prefusion-stabilized S relative to other groups. Prefusion S binding titers positively correlated with plasma neutralizing activity, indicating that physical stabilization of the prefusion conformation enhances protection against SARS-CoV-2. We show that almost all plasma neutralizing activity is directed to prefusion S, in particular the S1 subunit, and that variant cross-neutralization is mediated solely by RBD-specific antibodies. Our data provide a quantitative framework for guiding future S engineering efforts to develop vaccines with higher resilience to the emergence of variants and longer durability than current technologies.

Date: Dec. 21, 2021

Status: Preliminary Report

View Source: doi: 10.1101/2021.12.19.473391

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