May 14, 2021

BNT162b2-Elicited Neutralization against New SARS-CoV-2 Spike Variants

Category: Article Summary

Topic: Vaccines and Immunity

Keywords (Tags): vaccine, variant

• An in vitro study of serum neutralization after two doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine found that variants B.1.526, B.1.429, and B.1.1.7+E484K remained susceptible to vaccine-elicited neutralizing antibodies at a level equivalent to the neutralization of wild-type USA-WA1/2020 strain. The authors suggest that these results indicate the additional E484K mutation, also found in the B.1.351 and B.1.526 lineages, causes little compromise to neutralization of vaccine-induced antibodies and confirm the importance of mass immunization as a central strategy to control the COVID-19 pandemic.

Liu et al. (May 12, 2021). BNT162b2-Elicited Neutralization against New SARS-CoV-2 Spike Variants. New England Journal of Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMc2106083