Tatarstan Academy of Sciences

Around a year ago — before Delta and other variants entered the COVID-19 lexicon — virologists Theodora Hatziioannou and Paul Bieniasz, both at the Rockefeller University in New York City, set out to make a version of a key SARS-CoV-2 protein with the ability to dodge all the infection-blocking antibodies our body makes.

The goal was to identify the parts of spike — the protein SARS-CoV-2 uses to infect cells — that are targeted by these neutralizing antibodies in order to map a key part of our body's attack on the virus. So the researchers mixed and matched potentially concerning mutations identified in lab experiments and circulating viruses, and tested their Franken-spikes in harmless ‘pseudotype’ viruses incapable of causing COVID-19. In a study published this September in Nature¹, they reported that a spike mutant containing 20 changes was fully resistant to neutralizing antibodies made by most of the people tested who had been either infected or vaccinated — but not to everyone’s.

Those who had recovered from COVID-19 months before receiving their jabs harboured antibodies capable of defanging the mutant spike, which displays much more resistance to immune attack than any known naturally occurring variant. These peoples’ antibodies even blocked other types of coronaviruses. “It’s very likely they will be effective against any future variant that SARS-CoV-2 throws against them,” says Hatziioannou.

As the world watches out for new coronavirus variants, the basis of such ‘super-immunity’ has become one of the pandemic’s great mysteries. Researchers hope that, by mapping the differences between the immune protection that comes from infection compared with that from vaccination, they can chart a safer path to this higher level of protection.

Read more on: nature.com