Brian Montoya, Carolina R Melo-Silva, Lingjuan Tang, Samita Kafle, Peter Lidskiy, Csaba Bajusz, Máté Vadovics, Hiromi Muramatsu, Edit Abraham, Zoltan Lipinszki, Debotri Chatterjee, Gabrielle Scher, Juliana Benitez, Molly M H Sung, Ying K Tam, Nicholas J Catanzaro, Alexandra Schäfer, Raul Andino, Ralph S Baric, David R Martinez, Norbert Pardi, Luis J Sigal
The role of CD8+ T-cells in SARS-CoV-2 pathogenesis or mRNA-LNP vaccine-induced protection from lethal COVID-19 is unclear. Using mouse-adapted SARS-CoV-2 virus (MA30) in C57BL/6 mice, we show that CD8+ T-cells are unnecessary for the intrinsic resistance of female or the susceptibility of male mice to lethal SARS-CoV-2 infection. Also, mice immunized with a di-proline prefusion-stabilized full-length SARS-CoV-2 Spike (S-2P) mRNA-LNP vaccine, which induces Spike-specific antibodies and CD8+ T-cells specific for the Spike-derived VNFNFNGL peptide, are protected from SARS-CoV-2 infection-induced lethality and weight loss, while mice vaccinated with mRNA-LNPs encoding only VNFNFNGL are protected from lethality but not weight loss...
April 10, 2024: Molecular Therapy