The characteristics of BCR‐CDR3 repertoire in COVID‐19 patients and SARS‐CoV‐2 vaccinated volunteers

Abstract

The global COVID‐19 pandemic has caused more than 1 billion infections, and numerous SARS‐CoV‐2 vaccines developed rapidly have been administered over 10 billion doses. The world is continuously concerned about the cytokine storms induced by the interaction between SARS‐CoV‐2 and host, long COVID, breakthrough infections postvaccination, and the impact of SARS‐CoV‐2 variants. BCR‐CDR3 repertoire serves as a molecular target for monitoring the antiviral response “trace” of B cells, evaluating the effects, mechanisms, and memory abilities of individual responses to B cells, and has been successfully applied in analyzing the infection mechanisms, vaccine improvement, and neutralizing antibodies preparation of influenza virus, HIV, MERS, and Ebola virus. Based on research on BCR‐CDR3 repertoire of COVID‐19 patients and volunteers who received different SARS‐CoV‐2 vaccines in multiple laboratories worldwide, we focus on analyzing the characteristics and changes of BCR‐CDR3 repertoire, such as diversity, clonality, V&J genes usage and pairing, SHM, CSR, shared CDR3 clones, as well as the summary on BCR sequences targeting virus‐specific epitopes in the preparation and application research of SARS‐CoV‐2 potential therapeutic monoclonal antibodies. This review provides comparative data and new research schemes for studying the possible mechanisms of differences in B cell response between SARS‐CoV‐2 infection or vaccination, and supplies a foundation for improving vaccines after SARS‐CoV‐2 mutations and potential antibody therapy for infected individuals.