Serum peptidome profiles immune response of COVID-19 Vaccine administration

Abstract

BackgroundCoronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has caused significant loss of life and property. In response to the serious pandemic, recently developed vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 have been administrated to the public. Nevertheless, the research on human immunization response against COVID-19 vaccines is insufficient. Although much information associated with vaccine efficacy, safety and immunogenicity has been reported by pharmaceutical companies based on laboratory studies and clinical trials, vaccine evaluation needs to be extended further to better understand the effect of COVID-19 vaccines on human beings.MethodsWe performed a comparative peptidome analysis on serum samples from 95 participants collected at four time points before and after receiving CoronaVac. The collected serum samples were analyzed by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) to profile the serum peptides, and also subjected to humoral and cellular immune response analyses to obtain typical immunogenicity information.ResultsSignificant difference in serum peptidome profiles by MALDI-TOF MS was observed after vaccination. By supervised statistical analysis, a total of 13 serum MALDI-TOF MS feature peaks were obtained on day 28 and day 42 of vaccination. The feature peaks were identified as component C1q receptor, CD59 glycoprotein, mannose-binding protein C, platelet basic protein, CD99 antigen, Leucine-rich alpha-2-glycoprotein, integral membrane protein 2B, platelet factor 4 and hemoglobin subunits. Combining with immunogenicity analysis, the study provided evidence for the humoral and cellular immune responses activated by CoronaVac. Furthermore, we found that it is possible to distinguish neutralizing antibody (NAbs)-positive from NAbs-negative individuals after complete vaccination using the serum peptidome profiles by MALDI-TOF MS together with machine learning methods, including random forest (RF), partial least squares-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA), linear support vector machine (SVM) and logistic regression (LR).ConclusionsThe study shows the promise of MALDI-TOF MS-based serum peptidome analysis for the assessment of immune responses activated by COVID-19 vaccination, and discovered a panel of serum peptides biomarkers for COVID-19 vaccination and for NAbs generation. The method developed in this study can help not only in the development of new vaccines, but also in the post-marketing evaluation of developed vaccines.

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“…During the pre-vaccination period, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic substantially burdened the world medically and socioeconomically, with the major determinant of patients’ survival relying solely on supportive measures ( 1 ). By inducing certain inflammatory cascades ( 2 ), COVID-19 vaccination induces the production of pathogen-specific neutralizing antibodies ( 3 ), which plays a significant role in decelerating the disease spreading and reducing the cases of COVID-19-related organ failure, hospitalization and mortality, allowing a gradual resume of pre-pandemic lifestyle in many parts of the world ( 4 , 5 ). Nonetheless, emerging COVID-19 variants and the spike in disease incidence associated with waning immunity emphasize the importance of maintaining high-level immunity to prevent the COVID-19 pandemic from rehappening ( 6 , 7 ).…”