The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed a range of disease phenotypes in infected patients with asymptomatic, mild, or severe clinical outcomes, but the mechanisms that determine such variable outcomes remain unresolved. In this study, we identified immunodominant CD8 T-cell epitopes in the spike antigen using a novel TCR-binding algorithm. The predicted epitopes induced robust T-cell activation in unexposed donors demonstrating pre-existing CD4 and CD8 T-cell immunity to SARS-CoV-2 antigen. The T-cell reactivity to the predicted epitopes was higher than the Spike-S1 and S2 peptide pools in the unexposed donors. A key finding of our study is that pre-existing T-cell immunity to SARS-CoV-2 is contributed by TCRs that recognize common viral antigens such as Influenza and CMV, even though the viral epitopes lack sequence identity to the SARS-CoV-2 epitopes. This finding is in contrast to multiple published studies in which pre-existing T-cell immunity is suggested to arise from shared epitopes between SARS-CoV-2 and other common cold-causing coronaviruses. However, our findings suggest that SARS-CoV-2 reactive T-cells are likely to be present in many individuals because of prior exposure to flu and CMV viruses.
【저자키워드】 immunology, Adaptive immunity, Infection, 【초록키워드】 viruses, SARS-CoV-2, Immunity, Influenza, COVID-19 pandemic, T-cells, peptide, outcome, CD4, clinical outcomes, Antigen, Epitopes, Viral, Asymptomatic, Algorithm, Mild, CMV, donors, SARS-CoV-2 antigen, flu, T-cell, epitope, TCR, mechanism, SARS-CoV-2 epitopes, Donor, exposure to, Viral antigen, infected patients, individual, disease phenotype, T-cell activation, immunodominant, sequence identity, TCRs, reactive, robust, predicted, lack, determine, recognize, suggested, infected patient, contributed, reactivity, CD8 T-cell, common cold-causing coronaviruses, peptide pool, pre-existing T-cell, the SARS-CoV-2, 【제목키워드】 Immunity, Antigen, T-cell epitope, individual, robust, pre-existing T-cell, the SARS-CoV-2,