Back

Sensitivity of infectious SARS-CoV-2 B.1.1.7 and B.1.351 variants to neutralizing antibodies

Planas, D.; Bruel, T.; Grzelak, L.; Guivel-Benhassine, F.; Staropoli, I.; Porrot, F.; Planchais, C.; Buchrieser, J.; Rajah, M. M.; Bishop, E.; Albert, M.; Donati, F.; Behillil, S.; Enouf, V.; Marianne, M.; Gonzalez, M.; De Seze, J.; Pere, H.; Veyer, D.; Seve, A.; Simon-Loriere, E.; Fafi-Kremer, S.; Stefic, K.; Mouquet, H.; Hocqueloux, L.; van der Werf, S.; Prazuck, T.; Schwartz, O.

2021-02-12 immunology
10.1101/2021.02.12.430472 bioRxiv
Show abstract

SARS-CoV-2 B.1.1.7 and B.1.351 variants emerged respectively in United Kingdom and South Africa and spread in many countries. Here, we isolated infectious B.1.1.7 and B.1.351 strains and examined their sensitivity to anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies present in sera and nasal swabs, in comparison with a D614G reference virus. We established a novel rapid neutralization assay, based on reporter cells that become GFP+ after overnight infection. B.1.1.7 was neutralized by 79/83 sera from convalescent patients collected up to 9 months post symptoms, almost similar to D614G. There was a mean 6-fold reduction in titers and even loss of activity against B.1.351 in 40% of convalescent sera after 9 months. Early sera from 19 vaccinated individuals were almost as potent against B.1.1.7 but less efficacious against B.1.351, when compared to D614G. Nasal swabs from vaccine recipients were not neutralizing, except in individuals who were diagnosed COVID-19+ before vaccination. Thus, faster-spreading variants acquired a partial resistance to humoral immunity generated by natural infection or vaccination, mostly visible in individuals with low antibody levels.

Matching journals

The top 5 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.