Katherine McMahan, J. Yu, N. Mercado, C. Loos, Lisa H. Tostanoski, Abishek Chandrashekar, Jinyan Liu, Lauren Peter, C. Atyeo, A. Zhu, Esther A. Bondzie, Gabriel Dagotto, Makda S. Gebre, Catherine Jacob-Dolan, Zhenfeng Li, Felix Nampanya, Shivani Patel, Laurent Pessaint, Alex Van Ry, Kelvin Blade, J. Yalley-Ogunro, M. Cabus, Renita Brown, Anthony Cook, Elyse Teow, H. Andersen, M. Lewis, D. Lauffenburger, G. Alter, D. Barouch
Nature, 2020
Recent studies have reported protective efficacy of both natural immunity1 and vaccine-induced immunity2–7 against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) challenge in rhesus macaques. However, the importance of humoral and cellular immunity for protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection remains to be determined. Here we show that adoptive transfer of purified IgG from convalescent macaques protects naïve recipient rhesus macaques against SARS-CoV-2 challenge in a dose dependent fashion. Depletion of CD8+ T cells in convalescent animals partially abrogated the protective efficacy of natural immunity against SARS-CoV-2 re-challenge, suggesting the importance of cellular immunity in the context of waning or subprotective antibody titers. These data demonstrate that relatively low antibody titers are sufficient for protection against SARS-CoV-2 in rhesus macaques, and that cellular immune responses may also contribute to protection if antibody responses are suboptimal. We also show that higher antibody titers are required for therapy of SARS-CoV-2 infection in macaques. These findings have important implications for the development of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines and immune-based therapeutics.
Cited by 221 publications.
Field of study: Medicine