PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Aurélien Sokal
AU  - Matteo Broketa
AU  - Annalisa Meola
AU  - Giovanna Barba-Spaeth
AU  - Ignacio Fernández
AU  - Slim Fourati
AU  - Imane Azzaoui
AU  - Andrea de La Selle
AU  - Alexis Vandenberghe
AU  - Anais Roeser
AU  - Magali Bouvier-Alias
AU  - Etienne Crickx
AU  - Laetitia Languille
AU  - Marc Michel
AU  - Bertrand Godeau
AU  - Sébastien Gallien
AU  - Giovanna Melica
AU  - Yann Nguyen
AU  - Virginie Zarrouk
AU  - Florence Canoui-Poitrine
AU  - France Noizat-Pirenne
AU  - Jérôme Megret
AU  - Jean-Michel Pawlotsky
AU  - Simon Fillatreau
AU  - Etienne Simon-Lorière
AU  - Jean-Claude Weill
AU  - Claude-Agnès Reynaud
AU  - Félix A. Rey
AU  - Pierre Bruhns
AU  - Pascal Chappert
AU  - Matthieu Mahévas
TI  - Immune escape of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant from mRNA vaccination-elicited RBD-specific memory B cells
AID  - 10.1101/2021.12.21.473528
DP  - 2021 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2021.12.21.473528
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/12/22/2021.12.21.473528.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/12/22/2021.12.21.473528.full
AB  - Memory B cells (MBCs) represent a second layer of immune protection against SARS-CoV-2. Whether MBCs elicited by mRNA vaccines can recognize the Omicron variant is of major concern. We used bio-layer interferometry to assess the affinity against the receptor-binding-domain (RBD) of Omicron spike of 313 naturally expressed monoclonal IgG that were previously tested for affinity and neutralization against VOC prior to Omicron. We report here that Omicron evades recognition from a larger fraction of these antibodies than any of the previous VOCs. Additionally, whereas 30% of these antibodies retained high affinity against Omicron-RBD, our analysis suggest that Omicron specifically evades antibodies displaying potent neutralizing activity against the D614G and Beta variant viruses. Further studies are warranted to understand the consequences of a lower memory B cell potency on the overall protection associated with current vaccines.Competing Interest StatementOutside of the submitted work, M. Mahevas. received research funds from GSK and personal fees from LFB and Amgen. J.-C.W. received consulting fees from Institut Merieux. P.B. received consulting fees from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals. J.-M.P. received personal fees from Abbvie, Gilead, Merck, and Siemens Healthcare. F.R. is a member of the board of MELETIOS Therapeutics and of the Scientific Advisory Board of eureKARE.