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Vaccinated and boosted individuals suffering an Omicron breakthrough infection generate a broad and powerful immune response not only to Omicron but also to other variants.  This from a collaborative group of German virologists including those at BioNTech, the creators of the current Pfizer CoVid vaccine.

 

The researchers studied blood from a biobank that included samples drawn before and after vaccination, boosting, and the occurrence of Omicron breakthrough infections.  Those patients experiencing breakthrough infections not only enjoyed formation of robust neutralizing antibodies against the unique Omicron spike antigens, but they also experienced a significant expansion of antibody-producing B lymphocytes that target the spike proteins from all previous variants as well as the original Wuhan strain.

 

This study suggests that the next and badly needed CoVid vaccine will be based on the Omicron subvariants since they appear to contain antigens that trigger broad protective antibody responses against all CoVid variants known to us so far.  More work is needed on which vaccine components can also ramp up effective cell-mediated immunity.

 

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.04.01.486695v1.full.pdf

 

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