Pre-existing T cell-mediated cross-reactivity to SARS-CoV-2 cannot solely be explained by prior exposure to endemic human coronaviruses.

ABSTRACT: T-cell-mediated immunity to SARS-CoV-2-derived peptides in individuals unexposed to SARS-CoV-2 has been previously reported. This pre-existing immunity was suggested to largely derive from prior exposure to 'common cold' endemic human coronaviruses (HCoVs). To test this, we characterised the sequence homology of SARS-CoV-2-derived T-cell epitopes reported in the literature across the full proteome of the Coronaviridae family. 54.8% of these epitopes had no homology to any of the HCoVs. Further, the proportion of SARS-CoV-2-derived epitopes with any level of sequence homology to the proteins encoded by any of the coronaviruses tested is well-predicted by their alignment-free phylogenetic distance to SARS-CoV-2 (Pearson's r = -0.958). No coronavirus in our dataset showed a significant excess

SUBMITTER: Tan CCS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8428999 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature