Journal
NATURE
Volume 597, Issue 7875, Pages 268-+Publisher
NATURE PORTFOLIO
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03841-4
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Funding
- Federal Ministry of Education and Research [01KI2077]
- Ministry of Science, Research and Art, State of Baden-Wuerttemberg [COVID-19/AZ.: AZ33-7533-6-10/89/8]
- CRC/TRR [179-Project 01, 179-Project 02, 179-Project 04, 179-Project 20, 179-Project 21]
- CRC [1160-Project A02, 1160-Project A06, 1160-Project B02, 1160-Project A03]
- German Research Foundation (DFG) [BE-5496/5-1, 272983813, 256073931]
- Margarete von Wrangell fellowship (State of Baden-Wuerttemberg)
- Berta-Ottenstein Programme, Faculty of Medicine, University of Freiburg
- IMM-PACT-Programme for Clinician Scientists, Department of Medicine II, Medical Center - University of Freiburg
- Faculty of Medicine, University of Freiburg
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After vaccination, CD8(+) T cells become important effector cells in providing early protection, being effectively mobilized one week after primary vaccination and maintaining stability after booster vaccination. Compared with natural infection, vaccine-induced CD8(+) T cells exhibit similar functional capacities but with a different subset distribution.
SARS-CoV-2 spike mRNA vaccines(1-3) mediate protection from severe disease as early as ten days after prime vaccination(3), when neutralizing antibodies are hardly detectable(4-6). Vaccine-induced CD8(+) T cells may therefore be the main mediators of protection at this early stage(7,8). The details of their induction, comparison to natural infection, and association with other arms of vaccine-induced immunity remain, however, incompletely understood. Here we show on a single-epitope level that a stable and fully functional CD8(+) T cell response is vigorously mobilized one week after prime vaccination with bnt162b2, when circulating CD4(+) T cells and neutralizing antibodies are still weakly detectable. Boost vaccination induced a robust expansion that generated highly differentiated effector CD8(+) T cells; however, neither the functional capacity nor the memory precursor T cell pool was affected. Compared with natural infection, vaccine-induced early memory T cells exhibited similar functional capacities but a different subset distribution. Our results indicate that CD8(+) T cells are important effector cells, are expanded in the early protection window after prime vaccination, precede maturation of other effector arms of vaccine-induced immunity and are stably maintained after boost vaccination.
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