Full protection against all four SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOC) in hamsters requires revision of spike antigen used for vaccination. (preprint)

ABSTRACT

Current licensed COVID-19 vaccines are based on antigen sequences of initial SARS-CoV-2 isolates that emerged in 2019. By mid 2021 these historical virus strains have been completely replaced by new cosmopolitan SARS-CoV-2 lineages. The ongoing pandemic has been further driven by emerging variants of concern (VOC) Alpha, Beta, Gamma and, lately predominant, Delta. These are characterized by an increased transmissibility and possible escape from naturally acquired or vaccine-induced immunity. We here show, using a YF17D-vectored first-generation COVID-19 vaccine (Sanchez-Felipe et al., 2021) and a stringent hamster challenge model (Abdelnabi et al., 2021) that the immunity elicited by a prototypic spike antigen is insufficient to provide optimal protection against the Beta VoC, urging for an antigenic update. We therefore designed an updated second-generation vaccine candidate that carries the sequence of a spike antigen that includes crucial epitopes from multiple VOCs. This vaccine candidate yielded a marked change in target antigen spectrum covered as demonstrated by (i) antigenic cartography and (ii) full protection against infection and virus-induced disease caused by any of the four VOCs (Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta) used for challenge. This more universal COVID-19 vaccine candidate also efficiently blocked direct transmission of VOC Delta from vaccinated infected hamsters to non-vaccinated sentinels under prolonged co-housing conditions. In conclusion, our data suggest that current first-generation COVID-19 vaccines need to be adapted to cover emerging sequence diversity of VOC to preserve vaccine efficacy and to contain virus spread at the community level.