{"doi":"10.7554/elife.72619","title":"mRNA vaccine-induced T cells respond identically to SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern but differ in longevity and homing properties depending on prior infection status","abstract":"While mRNA vaccines are proving highly efficacious against SARS-CoV-2, it is important to determine how booster doses and prior infection influence the immune defense they elicit, and whether they protect against variants. Focusing on the T cell response, we conducted a longitudinal study of infection-naïve and COVID-19 convalescent donors before vaccination and after their first and second vaccine doses, using a high-parameter CyTOF analysis to phenotype their SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells. Vaccine-elicited spike-specific T cells responded similarly to stimulation by spike epitopes from the ancestral, B.1.1.7 and B.1.351 variant strains, both in terms of cell numbers and phenotypes. In infection-naïve individuals, the second dose boosted the quantity and altered the phenotypic properties of SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells, while in convalescents the second dose changed neither. Spike-specific T cells from convalescent vaccinees differed strikingly from those of infection-naïve vaccinees, with phenotypic features suggesting superior long-term persistence and ability to home to the respiratory tract including the nasopharynx. These results provide reassurance that vaccine-elicited T cells respond robustly to emerging viral variants, confirm that convalescents may not need a second vaccine dose, and suggest that vaccinated convalescents may have more persistent nasopharynx-homing SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells compared to their infection-naïve counterparts.","journal":"eLife","year":2021,"id":150625,"datarank":3.181254416351065,"base_score":4.5217885770490405,"endowment":4.5217885770490405,"self_citation_contribution":0.6782682865573562,"citation_network_contribution":2.502986129793709,"self_endowment_contribution":0.6782682865573562,"citer_contribution":2.502986129793709,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":91,"citer_count":80,"citers_with_citation_signal":68,"citers_with_endowment":68,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9568,"is_data_producer":true,"deposit_databanks":{"Dryad":["10.7272/Q60R9MMK"]},"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":71686,"name":"Xiaoyu Luo","orcid":"0000-0001-6059-0434","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":246062,"name":"Matthew McGregor","orcid":"0000-0002-1547-5063","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":246059,"name":"Guorui Xie","orcid":"0000-0002-9295-2724","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":636294,"name":"Victoria Murray","orcid":"0000-0002-4479-2359","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":28871,"name":"Warner C. Greene","orcid":"0000-0001-9896-8615","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":75994,"name":"Sulggi A. Lee","orcid":"0000-0003-1560-2250","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":71692,"name":"Nadia R. Roan","orcid":"0000-0002-5464-1976","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":246058,"name":"Jason Neidleman","orcid":"0000-0003-3525-8047","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":55,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:43:06.501849Z","pmid":"34636722","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":[]}