Adaptive immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection in severe versus mild individuals
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Abstract The global Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 has affected more than eight million people.There is an urgent need to investigate how the adaptive immunity is established in COVID-19 patients. In this study, we profiled adaptive immune cells of PBMCs from recovered COVID-19 patients with varying disease severity using single-cell RNA and TCR/BCR V(D)J sequencing. The sequencing data revealed SARS-CoV-2-specific shuffling of adaptive immune repertories and COVID-19-induced remodeling of peripheral lymphocytes. Characterization of variations in the peripheral T and B cells from the COVID-19 patients revealed a positive correlation of humoral immune response and T-cell immune memory with disease severity. Sequencing and functional data revealed SARS-CoV-2-specific T-cell immune memory in the convalescent COVID-19 patients. Furthermore, we also identified novel antigens that are responsive in the convalescent patients. Altogether, our study reveals adaptive immune repertories underlying pathogenesis and recovery in severe versus mild COVID-19 patients, providing valuable information for potential vaccine and therapeutic development against SARS-CoV-2 infection.
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The following table provides the Single-cell expression matrix and processed Single-cell BCR/TCR V(D)J sequencing data of 9 COVID-19 patients(5 Severe and 4 Mild) and 5 healthy controls. H4 and H5 were obtained from https://support.10xgenomics.com/single-cell-vdj/datasets. All nine patients with COVID-19 in this study were enrolled from the Heilongjiang provincial Hospital from March to April, 2020. The clinical classifications was defined as mild to moderate, severe, and critical, according to the “Diagnosis and Treatment Protocol of COVID-19 (the 7th Tentative Version)” by the National Health Commission of China issued on 3 March 2020.