{"doi":"10.1101/2022.01.02.22268634","title":"Vaccines Elicit Highly Cross-Reactive Cellular Immunity to the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Variant","abstract":"The highly mutated SARS-CoV-2 Omicron (B.1.1.529) variant has been shown to evade a substantial fraction of neutralizing antibody responses elicited by current vaccines that encode the WA1/2020 Spike immunogen 1 , resulting in increased breakthrough infections and reduced vaccine efficacy. Cellular immune responses, particularly CD8+ T cell responses, are likely critical for protection against severe SARS-CoV-2 disease 2-6 . Here we show that cellular immunity induced by current SARS-CoV-2 vaccines is highly cross-reactive against the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant. Individuals who received Ad26.COV2.S or BNT162b2 vaccines demonstrated durable CD8+ and CD4+ T cell responses that showed extensive cross-reactivity against both the Delta and Omicron variants, including in central and effector memory cellular subpopulations. Median Omicron-specific CD8+ T cell responses were 82-84% of WA1/2020-specific CD8+ T cell responses. These data suggest that current vaccines may provide considerable protection against severe disease with the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant despite the substantial reduction of neutralizing antibody responses.","journal":"medRxiv","year":2022,"id":296397,"datarank":0.586803450814222,"base_score":3.912023005428146,"endowment":3.912023005428146,"self_citation_contribution":0.586803450814222,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.586803450814222,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":49,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9496,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":106518,"name":"Abishek Chandrashekar","orcid":"0000-0001-7821-5552","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":630510,"name":"Daniel Sellers","orcid":"0000-0002-8815-9459","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":630511,"name":"Julia Barrett","orcid":"0000-0002-5857-3632","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":107600,"name":"Michelle A. Lifton","orcid":"0000-0003-0279-2198","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":106719,"name":"Katherine McMahan","orcid":"0000-0002-3933-0539","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":806195,"name":"Michaela Sciacca","orcid":null,"position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":806196,"name":"Haley VanWyk","orcid":null,"position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":805692,"name":"Cindy Wu","orcid":"0000-0001-6924-5346","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":106716,"name":"Jingyou Yu","orcid":"0000-0002-0775-6623","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":656981,"name":"Ai‐ris Y. Collier","orcid":"0000-0002-8539-3960","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":106527,"name":"Dan H. Barouch","orcid":"0000-0001-5127-4659","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":218111,"name":"Jinyan Liu","orcid":"0000-0003-0504-2181","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":15,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:31:16.555318Z","pmid":"35018387","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":[]}