Ideally, vaccination should induce protective long-lived humoral and cellular immunity. Current licensed COVID-19 mRNA vaccines focused on the spike (S) region induce neutralizing antibodies that rapidly wane.
Herein, we show that a subunit vaccine (CD40.CoV2) targeting spike and nucleocapsid antigens to CD40-expressing cells elicits broad specific human (hu)Th1 CD4 ⁺ and CD8 ⁺ T cells in humanized mice.
CD40.CoV2 vaccination selectively enriched long-lived spike- and nucleocapsid-specific CD8 ⁺ progenitors with stem-cell-like memory (Tscm) properties, whereas mRNA BNT162b2 induced effector memory CD8 ⁺ T cells. CD8 ⁺ Tscm cells produced IFNγ and TNF upon antigenic restimulation and showed a high proliferation rate. We demonstrate that CD40 activation is specifically required for the generation of huCD8 ⁺ Tscm cells.
These results support the development of a CD40-vaccine platform capable of eliciting long-lasting T-cell immunity.
This work was supported by Inserm, Université Paris-Est Créteil, and the Investissements d'Avenir program, Vaccine Research Institute (VRI), managed by the ANR.