PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Alice Cho
AU  - Frauke Muecksch
AU  - Dennis Schaefer-Babajew
AU  - Zijun Wang
AU  - Shlomo Finkin
AU  - Christian Gaebler
AU  - Victor Ramos
AU  - Melissa Cipolla
AU  - Pilar Mendoza
AU  - Marianna Agudelo
AU  - Eva Bednarski
AU  - Justin DaSilva
AU  - Irina Shimeliovich
AU  - Juan Dizon
AU  - Mridushi Daga
AU  - Katrina Millard
AU  - Martina Turroja
AU  - Fabian Schmidt
AU  - Fengwen Zhang
AU  - Tarek Ben Tanfous
AU  - Mila Jankovic
AU  - Thiago Y. Oliveria
AU  - Anna Gazumyan
AU  - Marina Caskey
AU  - Paul D. Bieniasz
AU  - Theodora Hatziioannou
AU  - Michel C. Nussenzweig
TI  - Anti- SARS-CoV-2 Receptor Binding Domain Antibody Evolution after mRNA Vaccination
AID  - 10.1101/2021.07.29.454333
DP  - 2021 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2021.07.29.454333
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/08/30/2021.07.29.454333.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/08/30/2021.07.29.454333.full
AB  - Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection produces B-cell responses that continue to evolve for at least one year. During that time, memory B cells express increasingly broad and potent antibodies that are resistant to mutations found in variants of concern1. As a result, vaccination of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) convalescent individuals with currently available mRNA vaccines produces high levels of plasma neutralizing activity against all variants tested1, 2. Here, we examine memory B cell evolution 5 months after vaccination with either Moderna (mRNA-1273) or Pfizer- BioNTech (BNT162b2) mRNA vaccines in a cohort of SARS-CoV-2 naïve individuals. Between prime and boost, memory B cells produce antibodies that evolve increased neutralizing activity, but there is no further increase in potency or breadth thereafter. Instead, memory B cells that emerge 5 months after vaccination of naïve individuals express antibodies that are similar to those that dominate the initial response. While individual memory antibodies selected over time by natural infection have greater potency and breadth than antibodies elicited by vaccination, the overall neutralizing potency of plasma is greater following vaccination. These results suggest that boosting vaccinated individuals with currently available mRNA vaccines will increase plasma neutralizing activity but may not produce antibodies with breadth equivalent to those obtained by vaccinating convalescent individuals.Competing Interest StatementThe Rockefeller University has filed a provisional patent application in connection with this work on which M.C.N.is an inventor (US patent 63/021,387). The patent has been licensed by Rockefeller University to Bristol Meyers Squib.