Boosting with Omicron-specific mRNA vaccine or historical SARS-CoV-2 vaccines elicits discriminating immune responses against Omicron variants
Booster vaccinations are highly recommended in combating the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant and its subvariants. However, the optimal booster vaccination strategies and related immune mechanisms with different prior vaccinations are under-revealed. In this study, we systematically evaluated the immune responses in mice and hamsters with different prime-boost regimens before their protective efficacies against Omicron were detected. We found that boosting with Ad5-nCoV, S<sub>WT</sub>-2P or S<sub>Omicron</sub>-6P induced significantly higher levels of neutralization activities against Omicron variants than CoronaVac and ZF2001 by eliciting stronger germinal center (GC) responses. Specifically, S<sub>Omicron</sub>-6P induced even stronger antibody responses against Omicron variants in CoronaVac and Ad5-nCoV-primed animals than non-Omicron-specific vaccines but with limited differences as compared to Ad5-nCoV and S<sub>WT</sub>-2P. In addition, boosting with a specific vaccine has the potential to remodel the existing immune profiles. These findings indicated that adenovirus-vectored vaccines and mRNA vaccines would be more effective than other types of vaccines as booster shots in combating Omicron infections. Moreover, the protective efficacies of the vaccines in booster vaccinations are highly related to GC reactions in secondary lymphatic organs. In summary, these findings provide timely important information on prime-boost regimens and future vaccine design.
Authors
- Namei Wu
- Jiaming Lan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-1242-9866)
- Yan Wu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2734-0673)
- Xiaoying Jia (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4873-7258)
- Yucai Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6046-2934)
- Sandra Chiu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9034-5755)
- Entao Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0666-8557)
- Minmin Zhou (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-6501-3629)
- Yi Wu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5403-0473)
- Yang Liu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5221-7725)
- Wei Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8696-9773)
- Yanqiong Shen
- Xinghai Zhang
Institutions
- University of Science and Technology of China (CN)
- Anhui University (CN)
- Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
- Hefei National Center for Physical Sciences at Nanoscale (CN)
- Wuhan Institute of Virology (CN)
- Kai Biotech (South Korea) (KR)
- University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Acta Pharmaceutica Sinica B
- Published
- 2024-12-30
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apsb.2024.12.030
- Citations
- 1
- Primary Topic
- SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 Research
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.39
Funders
- Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- Chinese Academy of Sciences
- University of Science and Technology of China
- National Key Research and Development Program of China