SARS-CoV-2 spike mRNA vaccines 1 – 3 mediate protection from severe disease as early as ten days after prime vaccination 3 , when neutralizing antibodies are hardly detectable 4 – 6 . Vaccine-induced CD8 + T cells may therefore be the main mediators of protection at this early stage 7 , 8 . The details of their induction, comparison to natural infection, and association with other arms of vaccine-induced immunity remain, however, incompletely understood. Here we show on a single-epitope level that a stable and fully functional CD8 + T cell response is vigorously mobilized one week after prime vaccination with bnt162b2, when circulating CD4 + T cells and neutralizing antibodies are still weakly detectable. Boost vaccination induced a robust expansion that generated highly differentiated effector CD8 + T cells; however, neither the functional capacity nor the memory precursor T cell pool was affected. Compared with natural infection, vaccine-induced early memory T cells exhibited similar functional capacities but a different subset distribution. Our results indicate that CD8 + T cells are important effector cells, are expanded in the early protection window after prime vaccination, precede maturation of other effector arms of vaccine-induced immunity and are stably maintained after boost vaccination. Longitudinal analyses of SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine-elicited epitope-specific CD8 + T cell responses shows that CD8 + T cells are rapidly induced after prime vaccination and stably maintained after boost vaccination.
【저자키워드】 SARS-CoV-2, viral infection, RNA vaccines, Immunological memory, Lymphocyte differentiation, 【초록키워드】 neutralizing antibody, vaccination, Neutralizing antibodies, mRNA vaccine, T cells, CD4, CD8, mRNA vaccines, memory, BNT162b2, T cell, mRNA, T cell responses, memory T cells, distribution, natural infection, epitope, longitudinal, early stage, T cell response, memory T cell, boost, SARS-CoV-2 spike, association, severe disease, Vaccine-induced immunity, functional capacity, mediators, maturation, circulating, precursor, effector cells, memory T, Longitudinal analyses, Arm, robust, affected, detectable, exhibited, functional, analysis, subset, 【제목키워드】 CD8, Rapid,