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 Herati; Sergei B Koralov

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2023.108572

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

iScience. 2023 Nov 24;26(12):108572. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.108572. eCollection 2023 Dec 15.

Authors

Ellie N Ivanova¹, Jasmine Shwetar^{2

3}, Joseph C Devlin^{2

3}, Terkild B Buus^{1

4}, Sophie Gray-Gaillard⁵, Akiko Koide^{6

7}, Amber Cornelius⁵, Marie I Samanovic^{5

6}, Alberto Herrera¹, Eleni P Mimitou⁸, Chenzhen Zhang³, Trishala Karmacharya⁵, Ludovic Desvignes^{5

6

9}, Niels Ødum⁴, Peter Smibert⁸, Robert J Ulrich^{5

6}, Mark J Mulligan⁵, Shohei Koide^{7

10}, Kelly V Ruggles², Ramin S Herati^{5

6

11}, Sergei B Koralov¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Pathology, New York University Grossman School of Medicine, New York, NY 10016, USA.
² Institute of Systems Genetics, New York University Grossman School of Medicine, New York, NY 10016, USA.
³ Vilcek Institute of Graduate Biomedical Sciences, New York University Grossman School of Medicine, New York, NY 10016, USA.
⁴ LEO Foundation Skin Immunology Research Center, Department of Immunology and Microbiology, University of Copenhagen, 2200 Copenhagen, Denmark.
⁵ New York University Langone Vaccine Center, New York University Langone Health, New York, NY 10016, USA.
⁶ Department of Medicine, New York University Grossman School of Medicine, New York, NY 10016, USA.
⁷ Perlmutter Cancer Center, New York University Langone Health, New York, NY 10016, USA.
⁸ New York Genome Center, New York, NY 10013, USA.
⁹ High Containment Laboratories, Office of Science and Research, New York University Langone Health, New York, NY 10016, USA.
¹⁰ Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, New York University Grossman School of Medicine, New York, NY 10016, USA.
¹¹ Department of Microbiology, New York University Grossman School of Medicine, 430 East 29th Street, New York, NY 10016, USA.

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.

Keywords: Immune response; Immunology; Transcriptomics.

Abstract

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