{"doi":"10.17615/d0mc-dv20","title":"mRNA-LNP vaccine-induced CD8+ T cells protect mice from lethal SARS-CoV-2 infection in the absence of specific antibodies","abstract":"The role of CD8+ T cells in SARS-CoV-2 pathogenesis or mRNA-LNP vaccine-induced protection from lethal COVID-19 is unclear. Using mouse-adapted SARS-CoV-2 virus (MA30) in C57BL/6 mice, we show that CD8+ T cells are unnecessary for the intrinsic resistance of female or the susceptibility of male mice to lethal SARS-CoV-2 infection. Also, mice immunized with a di-proline prefusion-stabilized full-length SARS-CoV-2 Spike (S-2P) mRNA-LNP vaccine, which induces Spike-specific antibodies and CD8+ T cells specific for the Spike-derived VNFNFNGL peptide, are protected from SARSCoV-2 infection-induced lethality and weight loss, while mice vaccinated with mRNA-LNPs encoding only VNFNFNGL are protected from lethality but not weight loss. CD8+ T cell depletion ablates protection in VNFNFNGL but not in S-2P mRNALNP-vaccinated mice. Therefore, mRNA-LNP vaccine-induced CD8+ T cells are dispensable when protective antibodies are present but essential for survival in their absence. Hence, vaccine-induced CD8+ T cells may be critical to protect against SARS-CoV-2 variants that mutate epitopes targeted by protective antibodies.","journal":"UNC Libraries","year":2024,"id":499550,"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":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9565,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2024-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1245380,"name":"Peter Lidskiy","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":444230,"name":"Luis J. Sigal","orcid":"0000-0001-6642-5472","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":105112,"name":"Alexandra Schäfer","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1245381,"name":"J.M. López Benítez","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":765126,"name":"Csaba Bajusz","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":239647,"name":"Raul Andino","orcid":"0000-0001-5503-9349","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":852423,"name":"Molly M. H. Sung","orcid":"0000-0002-0874-0922","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":682384,"name":"Lingjuan Tang","orcid":"0000-0002-5416-5033","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":54908,"name":"Ying K. Tam","orcid":"0000-0002-4083-5251","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1244913,"name":"Máté Vadovics","orcid":"0000-0001-9028-987X","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":504688,"name":"Zoltán Lipinszki","orcid":"0000-0002-2067-0832","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1115163,"name":"Samita Kafle","orcid":"0000-0003-2860-7237","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":5952,"name":"Ralph S. Baric","orcid":"0000-0001-6827-8701","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":853048,"name":"Debotri Chatterjee","orcid":"0000-0002-1829-6474","position":14,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":54904,"name":"Norbert Pardi","orcid":"0000-0003-1008-6242","position":15,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":444228,"name":"Brian Montoya","orcid":"0000-0002-1969-2911","position":16,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":729517,"name":"Carolina R. Melo‐Silva","orcid":"0000-0002-0441-5452","position":17,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":474899,"name":"Gabrielle Scher","orcid":"0000-0002-7571-4791","position":18,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":20749,"name":"Hiromi Muramatsu","orcid":"0000-0003-1544-1493","position":19,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1038511,"name":"Nicholas J. Catanzaro","orcid":null,"position":20,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":504684,"name":"Edit Ábrahám","orcid":"0000-0002-1268-760X","position":21,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":540773,"name":"David R. Martinez","orcid":"0000-0002-1689-5529","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":0,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:09:53.188165Z","pmid":null,"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":[]}