mRNA COVID-19 vaccine elicits potent adaptive immune response without the acute inflammation of SARS-CoV-2 infection

Ellie N. Ivanova, Jasmine Shwetar, Joseph C. Devlin, Terkild B. Buus, Sophie Gray-Gaillard, Akiko Koide, Amber Cornelius, Marie I. Samanovic, Alberto Herrera, Eleni P. Mimitou, Chenzhen Zhang, Trishala Karmacharya, Ludovic Desvignes, Niels Ødum, Peter Smibert, Robert J. Ulrich, Mark J. Mulligan, Shohei Koide, Kelly V. Ruggles*, Ramin S. HeratiSergei B. Koralov

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

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Abstract

SARS-CoV-2 infection and vaccination elicit potent immune responses. Our study presents a comprehensive multimodal single-cell analysis of blood from COVID-19 patients and healthy volunteers receiving the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine and booster. We profiled immune responses via transcriptional analysis and lymphocyte repertoire reconstruction. COVID-19 patients displayed an enhanced interferon signature and cytotoxic gene upregulation, absent in vaccine recipients. B and T cell repertoire analysis revealed clonal expansion among effector cells in COVID-19 patients and memory cells in vaccine recipients. Furthermore, while clonal αβ T cell responses were observed in both COVID-19 patients and vaccine recipients, expansion of clonal γδ T cells was found only in infected individuals. Our dataset enables side-by-side comparison of immune responses to infection versus vaccination, including clonal B and T cell responses. Our comparative analysis shows that vaccination induces a robust, durable clonal B and T cell responses, without the severe inflammation associated with infection.

Original languageEnglish
Article number108572
JournaliScience
Volume26
Issue number12
Pages (from-to)1-19
ISSN2589-0042
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2023

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Authors

Keywords

  • Immune response
  • Immunology
  • Transcriptomics

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