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Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines effectively elicit humoral and cellular immunity against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in healthy populations. This immunity decreases several months after vaccination. However, the efficacy of vaccine-induced immunity and its durability in patients with severe asthma on biological therapy are unknown. In this study, we evaluated the effectiveness and durability of mRNA vaccine-induced SARS-CoV-2-specific humoral and cellular immunity in severe asthma patients on biological therapy. The study included 34 patients with severe asthma treated with anti-IgE (omalizumab, n=17), anti-IL5 (mepolizumab, n=13; reslizumab, n=3), or anti-IL5R (benralizumab, n=1) biological therapy. All patients were vaccinated with two doses of the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine with a 6-week interval between the doses. We found that this COVID-19 vaccination regimen elicited SARS-CoV-2-specific humoral and cellular immunity, which had significantly declined 6 months after receipt of the second dose of the vaccine. The type of biological treatment did not affect vaccine-elicited immunity. However, patient age negatively impacted the vaccine-induced humoral response. On the other hand, no such age-related impact on vaccine-elicited cellular immunity was observed. Our findings show that treatment of patients with severe asthma with biological therapy does not compromise the effectiveness or durability of COVID-19 vaccine-induced immunity., Competing Interests: JB is a part-time employee and a minority shareholder of Sotio, a.s. PP is a member of the advisory board of GSK and received consultancy fees from AstraZeneca, Novartis, and Chiesi and speaker fees from GSK and Novartis. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Podrazil, Taborska, Stakheev, Rataj, Lastovicka, Vlachova, Pohunek, Bartunkova and Smrz.)

Introduction: The COVID-19 vaccine was designed to provide protection against infection by the severe respiratory coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). However, the vaccine's efficacy can be compromised in patients with immunodeficiencies or the vaccine-induced immunoprotection suppressed by other comorbidity treatments, such as chemotherapy or immunotherapy. To enhance the protective role of the COVID-19 vaccine, we have investigated a combination of the COVID-19 vaccination with ex vivo enrichment and large-scale expansion of SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein-reactive CD4 + and CD8 + T cells., Methods: SARS-CoV-2-unexposed donors were vaccinated with two doses of the BNT162b2 SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. The peripheral blood mononuclear cells of the vaccinated donors were cell culture-enriched with T cells reactive to peptides derived from SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein. The enriched cell cultures were large-scale expanded using the rapid expansion protocol (REP) and the peptide-reactive T cells were evaluated., Results: We show that vaccination with the SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein-based mRNA COVID-19 vaccine-induced humoral response against SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein in all tested healthy SARS-CoV-2-unexposed donors. This humoral response was found to correlate with the ability of the donors' PBMCs to become enriched with SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein-reactive CD4 + and CD8 + T cells. Using an 11-day REP, the enriched cell cultures were expanded nearly 1000-fold, and the proportions of the SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein-reactive T cells increased., Conclusion: These findings show for the first time that the combination of the COVID-19 vaccination and ex vivo T cell large-scale expansion of SARS-CoV-2-reactive T cells could be a powerful tool for developing T cell-based adoptive cellular immunotherapy of COVID-19., (© 2021 The Authors. Immunity, Inflammation and Disease published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)