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Author Notes:

Vijayakumar Velu, vvelu@emory.edu

VV and AS conceived the study. VV, SG, and NC developed the methodology. SG, VV, NC, SC, and LI conducted the investigations. SG, NC, and VV wrote the original draft. VV, AS, AN, JR, and NC reviewed and edited the final manuscript. VV acquired funding; and VV, AS, AN, and JR supervised the study. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

We thank the physicians who supported the sample collection and for their patient management and data collection for this study. We thank Rita Tiller for her outstanding administrative support.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Subjects:

Research Funding:

This research was supported by the Office of Research Infrastructure Programs (ORIP/NIH) base grant P51 OD011132 to ENPRC. This work was supported in part by National Institutes of Health Grants CFAR ERASE AIDS-R03, R01 HD095741-01, 1R01AI148377-01A1 (to VV), Emory University CFAR grant P30 AI050409. This work is supported by the National Institutes of Health (grant numbers U54 CA260563-01) Immune Regulation of COVID-19 Infection in Cancer and Autoimmunity to JDR and ASN.

Keywords:

  • Science & Technology
  • Life Sciences & Biomedicine
  • Immunology
  • COVID-19 vaccination
  • pregnancy
  • cord blood
  • omicron
  • variants of concern

COVID-19 vaccine induced poor neutralization titers for SARS-CoV-2 omicron variants in maternal and cord blood

Tools:

Journal Title:

FRONTIERS IN IMMUNOLOGY

Volume:

Volume 14

Publisher:

, Pages 1211558-1211558

Type of Work:

Article | Final Publisher PDF

Abstract:

Introduction: Maternally derived antibodies are crucial for neonatal immunity. Understanding the binding and cross-neutralization capacity of maternal and cord antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2 variants following COVID-19 vaccination in pregnancy can inform neonatal immunity. Methods: Here we characterized the binding and neutralizing antibody profile at delivery in 24 pregnant individuals following two doses of Moderna mRNA-1273 or Pfizer BNT162b2 vaccination. We analyzed for SARS-CoV-2 multivariant cross-neutralizing antibody levels for wildtype Wuhan, Delta, Omicron BA1, BA2, and BA4/BA5 variants. In addition, we evaluated the transplacental antibody transfer by profiling maternal and umbilical cord blood. Results: Our results reveal that the current COVID-19 vaccination induced significantly higher RBD-specific binding IgG titers in cord blood compared to maternal blood for both the Wuhan and Omicron BA1 strain. Interestingly, the binding IgG antibody levels for the Omicron BA1 strain were significantly lower when compared to the Wuhan strain in both maternal and cord blood. In contrast to the binding, the Omicron BA1, BA2, and BA4/5 specific neutralizing antibody levels were significantly lower compared to the Wuhan and Delta variants. It is interesting to note that the BA4/5 neutralizing capacity was not detected in either maternal or cord blood. Discussion: Our data suggest that the initial series of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines were immunogenic in pregnant women, and vaccine-elicited binding antibodies were detectable in cord blood at significantly higher levels for the Wuhan and Delta variants but not for the Omicron variants. Interestingly, the vaccination did not induce neutralizing antibodies for Omicron variants. These results provide novel insight into the impact of vaccination on maternal humoral immune response and transplacental antibody transfer for SARS-CoV-2 variants and support the need for bivalent boosters as new variants emerge.

Copyright information:

© 2023 Govindaraj, Cheedarla, Cheedarla, Irby, Neish, Roback, Smith and Velu

This is an Open Access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
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