Pre-existing T cell-mediated cross-reactivity to SARS-CoV-2 cannot solely be explained by prior exposure to endemic human coronaviruses.
Infect Genet Evol
; 95: 105075, 2021 11.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1401708
ABSTRACT
T-cell-mediated immunity to SARS-CoV-2-derived peptides in individuals unexposed to SARS-CoV-2 has been previously reported. This pre-existing immunity was suggested to largely derive from prior exposure to 'common cold' endemic human coronaviruses (HCoVs). To test this, we characterised the sequence homology of SARS-CoV-2-derived T-cell epitopes reported in the literature across the full proteome of the Coronaviridae family. 54.8% of these epitopes had no homology to any of the HCoVs. Further, the proportion of SARS-CoV-2-derived epitopes with any level of sequence homology to the proteins encoded by any of the coronaviruses tested is well-predicted by their alignment-free phylogenetic distance to SARS-CoV-2 (Pearson's r = -0.958). No coronavirus in our dataset showed a significant excess of T-cell epitope homology relative to the proportion of expected random matches, given their genetic similarity to SARS-CoV-2. Our findings suggest that prior exposure to human or animal-associated coronaviruses cannot completely explain the T-cell repertoire in unexposed individuals that recognise SARS-CoV-2 cross-reactive epitopes.
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Coronaviridae
/
Disease Resistance
/
SARS-CoV-2
/
COVID-19
/
Immunologic Memory
/
Antibodies, Viral
Type of study:
Prognostic study
/
Randomized controlled trials
Topics:
Variants
Limits:
Animals
/
Humans
Language:
English
Journal:
Infect Genet Evol
Journal subject:
Biology
/
Communicable Diseases
/
Genetics
Year:
2021
Document Type:
Article
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