Cited by 1,674SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 ResearchImmune responses and vaccinationsCOVID-19 Clinical Research Studies

Evolution of antibody immunity to SARS-CoV-2

Open access
Gaebler, Christian, Wang, Zijun, Lorenzi, Julio C. C., Muecksch, Frauke, Finkin, Shlomo, Tokuyama, Minami, Cho, Alice, Jankovic, Mila +34 more·2021·Nature

Published version of a preprint

Abstract

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has infected 78 million individuals and is responsible for over 1.7 million deaths to date. Infection is associated with the development of variable levels of antibodies with neutralizing activity, which can protect against infection in animal models 1,2. Antibody levels decrease with time, but, to our knowledge, the nature and quality of the memory B cells that would be required to produce antibodies upon reinfection has not been examined. Here we report on the humoral memory response in a cohort of 87 individuals assessed at 1.3 and 6.2 months after infection with SARS-CoV-2. We find that titres of IgM and IgG antibodies against the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 decrease significantly over this time period, with IgA being less affected. Concurrently, neutralizing activity in plasma decreases by fivefold in pseudotype virus assays. By contrast, the number of RBD-specific memory B cells remains unchanged at 6.2 months after infection. Memory B cells display clonal turnover after 6.2 months, and the antibodies that they express have greater somatic hypermutation, resistance to RBD mutations and increased potency, indicative of continued evolution of the humoral response. Immunofluorescence and PCR analyses of intestinal biopsies obtained from asymptomatic individuals at 4 months after the onset of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) revealed the persistence of SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acids and immunoreactivity in the small bowel of 7 out of 14 individuals. We conclude that the memory B cell response to SARS-CoV-2 evolves between 1.3 and 6.2 months after infection in a manner that is consistent with antigen persistence.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1038/s41586-021-03207-w

Cites

70 of 70 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Increasing levels of antibody somatic mutations suggest that ongoing germinal centre activity drives further affinity maturation of antibody responses over time.

    “increasing levels of antibody somatic mutations suggest that ongoing germinal centre activity drives the further affinity maturation of antibody responses over time2.”
  • SARS-CoV-2-specific memory B cells accumulate over the first few months after initial infection.

    “We and others have shown that SARS-CoV-2-specific memory B cells accumulate over the first few months after initial infection2,3,8,9,28 (Fig. 1a)”
  • Frequencies of circulating memory B cells continue to increase for several months after recovery from COVID-19 when most other responses decline, suggesting recall of B cell memory may extend antibody-dependent protection despite waning serological titres.

    “The observations that frequencies of circulating memory B cells continue to increase for several months after recovery from COVID-19 (refs2,3,8,9,28), when most other responses are declining (Fig. 1a), suggest that recall of B cell memory may provide a mechanism to extend the duration of antibody-dependent protection in the face of waning serological titres.”
  • Eight weeks after the second mRNA vaccine dose, volunteers had high IgM and IgG binding titers to SARS-CoV-2 S and RBD.

    “8 weeks after the second vaccine injection volunteers showed high levels of IgM, and IgG anti-SARS-CoV-2 spike protein (S) and receptor binding domain (RBD) binding titers3,5,6.”
  • These findings are consistent with earlier work that has suggested that SHM and affinity maturation are important for the acquisition of broader neutralization activity of RBD-binding antibodies that are formed in response to SARS-CoV-2 infection.

    “These findings are consistent with earlier work that has suggested that SHM and affinity maturation are important for the acquisition of broader neutralization activity of RBD-binding antibodies that are formed in response to SARS-CoV-2 infection (48, 49).”

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 1

  1. [50]Weisblum Y Escape from neutralizing antibodies by SARS-CoV-2 spike protein variants. eLife 9, e61312 (2020). 33112236 PMC7723407

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Gaebler, C., Wang, Z., Lorenzi, J. C. C., Muecksch, F., Finkin, S., Tokuyama, M., Cho, A., Jankovic, M., Schaefer-Babajew, D., Oliveira, T. Y., Cipolla, M., Viant, C., Barnes, C. O., Bram, Y., Breton, G., Hägglöf, T., Mendoza, P., Hurley, A., Turroja, M., Gordon, K., Millard, K. G., Ramos, V., Schmidt, F., Weisblum, Y., Jha, D., Tankelevich, M., Martinez-Delgado, G., Yee, J., Patel, R., Dizon, J., Unson-O’Brien, C., Shimeliovich, I., Robbiani, D. F., Zhao, Z., Gazumyan, A., Schwartz, R. E., Hatziioannou, T., Bjorkman, P. J., Mehandru, S., Bieniasz, P. D., Caskey, M., & Nussenzweig, M. C.
Affiliations
  • Rockefeller University (US)
  • Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (US)
  • California Institute of Technology (US)
  • Weill Cornell Medicine (US)
  • Institute for Research in Biomedicine (CH)
  • Howard Hughes Medical Institute (US)
Corresponding author
  • Mehandru, Saurabh
  • Bieniasz, Paul D.
  • Caskey, Marina
  • Nussenzweig, Michel C.
Venue
Nature
Published
2021-01-18
Volume
591
Issue
7851
Pages
639-644
ISSN
  • 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
  • 1476-4687
OpenAlex
W3121906900
Cited by
1,674
References
70
Citations by year
2026: 60 · 2025: 116 · 2024: 170 · 2023: 283 · 2022: 510 · 2021: 519 · 2020: 15
FWCI
117.16
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Nature (publishedVersion)
  • bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (acceptedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (submittedVersion)
  • CaltechAUTHORS (California Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
Funders
  • Howard Hughes Medical Institute (UL1TR001866)
  • George Mason University
  • California Institute of Technology
  • Wellcome Trust
  • European Commission (101003650)
  • National Institutes of Health (/ NIDDK R01, P01-AI138398-S1, AI150464, TR001866, UL1TR001866)
  • Beckman Institute, California Institute of Technology
  • National Cancer Institute (R01CA234614)
  • National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (P01 AI138398-S1, R01AI078788, P50AI150464, AI150464, U19AI111825, P01AI138938, R37AI064003, R01AI107301)
  • National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (R01DK123749, R01DK120035, 1RO3DK117252, R01DK121072, DK123749, R03DK117252)
  • National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (TR001866)
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Infectious Diseases › SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 Research
  • Life Sciences › Immunology and Microbiology › Immunology › Immune responses and vaccinations
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Infectious Diseases › COVID-19 Clinical Research Studies
Keywords
SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19 pandemic, antibody immunity, memory B cells, humoral immune response, neutralizing antibodies, receptor binding domain, spike protein, somatic hypermutation, antibody waning, IgA, IgG, IgM, reinfection

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review