{"doi":"10.1126/sciimmunol.adu4107","title":"Germinal center–mediated broadening of B cell responses to SARS-CoV-2 booster immunization","abstract":"Germinal centers (GCs) are key sites for antibody diversification and affinity maturation. SARS-CoV-2 messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines elicit robust GC B cell responses in humans, but how these responses influence the breadth of immunity against viral variants remains unclear. We analyzed GC B cell responses in nine healthy adults after mRNA booster immunization. We show that 77.8% of the B cell clones in the GC expressed representative monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) recognizing the spike protein, with 37.8% of these targeting the receptor binding domain (RBD). One RBD-targeting mAb, mAb-52, neutralized all tested SARS-CoV-2 strains, including the recent XEC variant. mAb-52 used the IGHV3-66 public clonotype, protected hamsters challenged against the EG.5.1 variant, and targeted the class I/II RBD epitope, closely mimicking the binding footprint of ACE2. Its broad reactivity was driven by extensive somatic hypermutation, underscoring the critical role of GC reactions in shaping cross-variant B cell immunity after SARS-CoV-2 booster vaccination.","journal":"Science Immunology","year":2025,"id":514546,"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":8,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9559,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1334267,"name":"Deepika Jaiswal","orcid":"0000-0002-9565-1302","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":408059,"name":"Baoling Ying","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":225531,"name":"Wafaa B. 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