Figure 5.

Reduced peripheral vaccine-induced CD8⁺ T cell response in recovered COVID-19 patients

(A) The experimental design to study the CD8⁺ and CD4⁺ T cell responses to BNT162b2 vaccine in individuals recovered from previous COVID-19 infection. Timeline indicating the collection of sequential blood samples from HLA-A^∗02:01, HLA-B^∗40:01 (days 21 and 42) and HLA-DRB1^∗15:01 (days 21 and 28) recovered vaccinees. The number of donors (n) is indicated.

(B) Thirty-eight CD8⁺ T and eleven CD4⁺ T cell epitopes evaluated in this study are mapped onto the SARS-CoV-2 genome. The number of donors (n) is indicated.

(C) The magnitude of CD8⁺ T cell responses to SARS-CoV-2 epitopes in HLA-A^∗02:01 (red) and HLA-B^∗40:01 (yellow) donors.

(D) The magnitude of CD4⁺ T cell responses to SARS-CoV-2 epitopes in HLA-DRB1^∗15:01 donors. Data in (C) and (D) are represented as mean ± range.

(E) The comparison of spike and non-spike-specific HLA-A^∗02:01 (red) and HLA-B^∗40:01 (yellow) CD8⁺ T cell responses.

(F) The comparison of HLA-A^∗02:01 (red) and HLA-B^∗40:01 (yellow) CD8⁺ T cell responses to BNT162b2 vaccine in naive and recovered vaccinees. Data represented as mean ± range.

(G and H) Fraction of (G) cytokine producing and (H) AIM expressing T cells within S691/A^∗02:01 and S1016/B^∗40:01 specific CD8⁺ T cells (day 42 samples) after peptide stimulation (S691 and S1016, respectively).

(I) The comparison of spike and non-spike-specific CD4⁺ T cell response in recovered vaccinees.

(J) The comparison of antigen-specific CD4⁺ T cell response to BNT162b2 vaccine in naive and recovered vaccinees.

(K and L) Fraction of (K) cytokine producing and (L) AIM expressing T cells within S191/DRB^∗15:01 specific CD4+ T cells (day 28) after peptide stimulation (S191). p values were determined by Mann-Whitney test with Holm-Šídák method. See also Figure S5.