Functional antibody and T cell immunity following SARS-CoV-2 infection, including by variants of concern, in patients with cancer: the CAPTURE study

Patients with cancer have higher COVID-19 morbidity and mortality. Here we present the prospective CAPTURE study, integrating longitudinal immune profiling with clinical annotation. Of 357 patients with cancer, 118 were SARS-CoV-2 positive, 94 were symptomatic and 2 died of COVID-19. In this cohort, 83% patients had S1-reactive antibodies and 82% had neutralizing antibodies against wild type SARS-CoV-2, whereas neutralizing antibody titers against the Alpha, Beta and Delta variants were substantially reduced. S1-reactive antibody levels decreased in 13% of patients, whereas neutralizing antibody titers remained stable for up to 329 days. Patients also had detectable SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells and CD4+ responses correlating with S1-reactive antibody levels, although patients with hematological malignancies had impaired immune responses that were disease and treatment specific, but presented compensatory cellular responses, further supported by clinical recovery in all but one patient. Overall, these findings advance the understanding of the nature and duration of the immune response to SARS-CoV-2 in patients with cancer.

Author list

 

Annika Fendler, 

Lewis Au, 

Scott T. C. Shepherd, 

Fiona Byrne, 

Maddalena Cerrone, 

Laura Amanda Boos, 

Karolina Rzeniewicz, 

William Gordon, 

Benjamin Shum, 

Camille L. Gerard, 

Barry Ward, 

Wenyi Xie, 

Andreas M. Schmitt, 

Nalinie Joharatnam-Hogan, 

Georgina H. Cornish, 

Martin Pule, 

Leila Mekkaoui, 

Kevin W. Ng, 

Eleanor Carlyle, 

Kim Edmonds, 

Lyra Del Rosario, 

Sarah Sarker, 

Karla Lingard, 

Mary Mangwende, 

Lucy Holt, 

Hamid Ahmod, 

Richard Stone, 

Camila Gomes, 

Helen R. Flynn, 

Ana Agua-Doce, 

Philip Hobson, 

Simon Caidan, 

Michael Howell, 

Mary Wu, 

Robert Goldstone, 

Margaret Crawford, 

Laura Cubitt, 

Harshil Patel, 

Mike Gavrielides, 

Emma Nye, 

Ambrosius P. Snijders, 

James I. MacRae, 

Jerome Nicod, 

Firza Gronthoud, 

Robyn L. Shea, 

Christina Messiou, 

David Cunningham, 

Ian Chau, 

Naureen Starling, 

Nicholas Turner, 

Liam Welsh, 

Nicholas van As, 

Robin L. Jones, 

Joanne Droney, 

Susana Banerjee, 

Kate C. Tatham, 

Shaman Jhanji, 

Mary O’Brien, 

Olivia Curtis, 

Kevin Harrington, 

Shreerang Bhide, 

Jessica Bazin, 

Anna Robinson, 

Clemency Stephenson, 

Tim Slattery, 

Yasir Khan, 

Zayd Tippu, 

Isla Leslie, 

Spyridon Gennatas, 

Alicia Okines, 

Alison Reid, 

Kate Young, 

Andrew J. S. Furness, 

Lisa Pickering, 

Sonia Gandhi, 

Steve Gamblin, 

Charles Swanton, 

The Crick COVID-19 Consortium, 

Emma Nicholson, 

Sacheen Kumar, 

Nadia Yousaf, 

Katalin A. Wilkinson, 

Anthony Swerdlow, 

Ruth Harvey, 

George Kassiotis, 

James Larkin, 

Robert J. Wilkinson, 

Samra Turajlic & 

The CAPTURE consortium

Novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2

10.1038/s43018-021-00275-9

Nature - Cancer