1. Correlates of protection against SARS-CoV-2 in rhesus macaques
- Author
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McMahan, Katherine, Yu, Jingyou, Mercado, Noe B., Loos, Carolin, Tostanoski, Lisa H., Chandrashekar, Abishek, Liu, Jinyan, Peter, Lauren, Atyeo, Caroline, Zhu, Alex, Bondzie, Esther A., Dagotto, Gabriel, Gebre, Makda S., Jacob-Dolan, Catherine, Li, Zhenfeng, Nampanya, Felix, Patel, Shivani, Pessaint, Laurent, Van Ry, Alex, Blade, Kelvin, Yalley-Ogunro, Jake, Cabus, Mehtap, Brown, Renita, Cook, Anthony, Teow, Elyse, Andersen, Hanne, Lewis, Mark G., Lauffenburger, Douglas A., Alter, Galit, and Barouch, Dan H.
- Abstract
Recent studies have reported the protective efficacy of both natural1and vaccine-induced2–7immunity against challenge with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in rhesus macaques. However, the importance of humoral and cellular immunity for protection against infection with SARS-CoV-2 remains to be determined. Here we show that the adoptive transfer of purified IgG from convalescent rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) protects naive recipient macaques against challenge with SARS-CoV-2 in a dose-dependent fashion. Depletion of CD8+T cells in convalescent macaques partially abrogated the protective efficacy of natural immunity against rechallenge with SARS-CoV-2, which suggests a role for cellular immunity in the context of waning or subprotective antibody titres. These data demonstrate that relatively low antibody titres are sufficient for protection against SARS-CoV-2 in rhesus macaques, and that cellular immune responses may contribute to protection if antibody responses are suboptimal. We also show that higher antibody titres are required for treatment of SARS-CoV-2 infection in macaques. These findings have implications for the development of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines and immune-based therapeutic agents.
- Published
- 2021
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