PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Keiya Uriu
AU  - Paúl Cárdenas
AU  - Erika Muñoz
AU  - Veronica Barragan
AU  - Yusuke Kosugi
AU  - Kotaro Shirakawa
AU  - Akifumi Takaori-Kondo
AU  - Ecuador-COVID19 Consortium
AU  - The Genotype to Phenotype Japan (G2P-Japan) Consortium
AU  - Kei Sato
TI  - Characterization of the immune resistance of SARS-CoV-2 Mu variant and the immunity induced by Mu infection
AID  - 10.1101/2021.11.23.469770
DP  - 2021 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2021.11.23.469770
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/11/24/2021.11.23.469770.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/11/24/2021.11.23.469770.full
AB  - We have revealed that the SARS-CoV-2 Mu variant is highly resistant to COVID-19 convalescent sera and vaccine sera.1 However, it remains unclear how the immune resistance of the Mu variant is determined. Also, although the Mu variant is highly resistant to the sera obtained from COVID-19 convalescent during early pandemic (i.e., infected with prototypic virus) and vaccinated individuals (i.e., immunized based on prototypic virus), it was unaddressed how the convalescent sera from Mu-infected individuals function. In this study, we revealed that the two mutations in the spike protein of Mu variant, YY144-145TSN and E484K, are responsible for the potent immune resistance of Mu variant. Additionally, we showed that the convalescent sera obtained from the Mu-infected individuals can be broadly antiviral against the Mu variant as well as other SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern/interest. Our findings suggest that developing novel vaccines based on the Mu variant can be more effective against a broad range of SARS-CoV-2 variants.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.