Omicron extensively but incompletely escapes Pfizer BNT162b2 neutralization
By S. Cele, Laurelle Jackson, D. Khoury, K. Khan, T. Moyo-Gwete, H. Tegally, J. E. San, D. Cromer, C. Scheepers, D. Amoako and 51 more. Nature, 2021
1,070 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern Omicron (Pango lineage B.1.1.529), first identified in Botswana and South Africa, may compromise vaccine effectiveness and lead to re-infections1. Here we investigated Omicron escape from neutralization by antibodies from South African individuals vaccinated with Pfizer BNT162b2. We used blood samples taken soon after vaccination from individuals who were vaccinated and previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 or vaccinated with no evidence of previous infection. We isolated and sequence-confirmed live Omicron virus from an infected person and observed that Omicron requires the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor to infect cells. We compared plasma neutralization of Omicron relative to an ancestral SARS-CoV-2 strain and found that neutralization of ancestral virus was much higher in infected and vaccinated individuals compared with the vaccinated-only participants. However, both groups showed a 22-fold reduction in vaccine-elicited neutralization by the Omicron variant. Participants who were vaccinated and had previously been infected exhibited residual neutralization of Omicron similar to the level of neutralization of the ancestral virus observed in the vaccination-only group. These data support the notion that reasonable protection against Omicron may be maintained using vaccination approaches. Plasma from individuals vaccinated with BNT162b2 exhibits 22-fold less neutralization capacity against Omicron (B.1.1.529) than against an ancestral SARS-CoV-2 strain but residual neutralization is maintained in those with high levels of neutralization of ancestral virus.
Subfields: Infectious Diseases, Molecular Biology, Oncology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c2f91cd7aa103a2ac23246a1609e1fae0d0fa3ab
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Molecular Biology
Citations in the corpus
- Antibody escape of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 from vaccine and BA.1 serum (2022, methodology): “The selection of antibody escape mutations has been documented in such individuals (Cele et al., 2022b; Karim et al., 2021; Kemp et al., 2021), and successive rounds of replication, recombination, and perhaps reinfection may be responsible for the selection of the constellation of S mutations found…”
- Attenuated fusogenicity and pathogenicity of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant (2022, positive): “However, as shown in this study and others 22 , Omicron spreads more rapidly than Delta; and moreover, Omicron appears to be much more resistant to vaccine-induced immunity than other SARS-CoV-2 variants, including Delta 24–29 .”