The Screening of SARS-CoV-2 Epitopes and Their Specific T Cells
DAI Chunye, XU Wenjue, LIU Lingfeng*
In this study, SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells were screened from COVID-19 vaccinated humansby MHC tetramer technology. In this experiment, aiming at the most common HLA-A*0201 typing in the Chinese population, seven SARS-CoV-2 spike antigen peptides were identified through the prediction of bioinformatics methods such as IEDB, SYFPEITHI and NetMHCpan4.0 combined with the experimental test of UV-substituted antigenic peptides. The 9-peptide antigenic peptides of the protein are S538, S976, S996, S1060, S1185, S1192 and S1220, of which S1220 has the highest affinity and S538 has the lowest affinity. Six HLA-A*0201-restricted S protein-specific tetramers except S538 were synthesized by MHC tetramer technology, and their specific T tetramers were screened in vaccinated HLA-A*0201 population PBMCs cell. It is proved that there is indeed a cellular immune response against SARS-CoV-2 in the HLA-A*0201 population vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2. At the same time, it is found that the specific T cells produced by different individuals in the immune response to different antigenic peptides of SARS-CoV-2 vary in number and size. There are differences in frequency, paving the way for subsequent research on cellular immunity caused by the new crown vaccine.
CN
EN