{"doi":"10.1101/2021.05.03.441323","title":"Protective heterologous T cell immunity in COVID-19 induced by MMR and Tdap vaccine antigens","abstract":"T cells are critical for control of viral infection and effective vaccination. We investigated whether prior Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) or Tetanus-Diphtheria-pertussis (Tdap) vaccination elicit cross-reactive T cells that mitigate COVID-19. Using co-cultures of antigen presenting cells (APC) loaded with antigens and autologous T cells, we found a high correlation between responses to SARS-CoV-2 (Spike-S1 and Nucleocapsid) and MMR and Tdap vaccine proteins in both SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals and individuals immunized with mRNA-based SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. The overlapping T cell population contained effector memory T cells (TEMRA) previously implicated in anti-viral immunity and their activation required APC-derived IL-15. TCR- and scRNA-sequencing detected cross-reactive clones with TEMRA features among the cells recognizing SARS-CoV-2, MMR and Tdap epitopes. A propensity-weighted analysis of 73,582 COVID-19 patients revealed that severe disease outcomes (hospitalization and transfer to intensive care unit or death) were reduced in MMR or Tdap vaccinated individuals by 38-32% and 23-20% respectively. In summary, SARS-CoV-2 re-activates memory T cells generated by Tdap and MMR vaccines, which may reduce disease severity.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2021,"id":216551,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":4,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9602,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":633266,"name":"Xavier Culleré","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":431822,"name":"Matthew L. Settles","orcid":"0000-0002-3424-1086","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":248158,"name":"Xinge Ji","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":45522,"name":"Michael W. Kattan","orcid":"0000-0002-3840-4161","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":218336,"name":"Michaël Desjardins","orcid":"0000-0003-4028-8507","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":389555,"name":"Blythe Durbin‐Johnson","orcid":null,"position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":91003,"name":"Tal Gilboa","orcid":"0000-0001-8172-7786","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":3841,"name":"Lindsey R. Baden","orcid":null,"position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":76195,"name":"David R. Walt","orcid":"0000-0002-5524-7348","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":624311,"name":"Andrew H. Lichtman","orcid":null,"position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":228048,"name":"Lara Jehi","orcid":"0000-0002-8041-6377","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":631783,"name":"Tanya N. Mayadas","orcid":"0000-0002-3604-4457","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":633265,"name":"Vijayashree Mysore","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":73,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:53:11.245932Z","pmid":"33972940","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}