| > unequivocally states that vaccine-induced immunity is more robust than that from infection. It absolutely does not make such a strong claim - a more accurate takeaway is that vaccination using the current mRNA based formulations induces an immune response highly targeted toward the S protein RBD. This has not been conclusively proven to provide better or worse protection than immunity acquired through natural infection. > At first glance, the RBD targeting of the vaccine sera neutralization might seem likely to increase susceptibility to viral mutations, but the rest of our results SUGGEST that this MAY not be the case. > We found that the specificity of the mRNA-1273 vaccine-induced RBD-binding antibody response often narrows over time. In contrast, the infection-elicited RBD-binding antibody response often broadens over time > The vaccinated individuals in our study were relatively young (18–55 years) and healthy, whereas the convalescent individuals were older (23–76 years, median 56) with a range of comorbidities (13). > Additionally, we did not examine effects of mutations or deletions to the N-terminal domain of the spike protein, which can also affect neutralization by vaccine sera (7). > Our experiments assayed binding of antibodies to isolated RBD expressed by yeast, and so cannot capture mutational effects on trimer conformation or antibodies with quaternary epitopes > Evidence from multiple experimental studies showing that single RBD point mutations can lead to resistance to neutralizing convalescent plasma from multiple donors suggests that specific single mutants may be able to evade spike-targeting vaccinal immunity in many individuals and rapidly lead to spread of vaccine-resistant SARS-CoV-2. [1] [1] Risk of rapid evolutionary escape from biomedical interventions targeting SARS-CoV-2 spike protein https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33909660/ |