Urbán, Szabolcs, Paragi, Gábor, Burián, Katalin, McLean, Gary R. and Virok, Dezső P. (2020) Identification of similar epitopes between SARS-CoV-2 and Bacillus Calmette-Guérin: potential for cross-reactive adaptive immunity. Clinical & Translational Immunology, 9 (12). pp. 1-8. ISSN 2050-0068
Objectives:
Bacillus Calmette–Guérin (BCG) vaccination has been implicated in protection against SARS-CoV-2 and as a non-specific immunization method against the virus. We therefore decided to investigate T cell and B cell epitopes within the BCG Pasteur strain proteome for similarity to immunogenic peptides of SARS-CoV-2.
Methods:
We used a bioinformatic approach and analyzed the BCG-Pasteur proteome to identify similar peptides to established and novel SARS-CoV-2 T cell and B cell epitopes.
Results:
We found 112 BCG MHC-I restricted T cell epitopes similar to MHC-I restricted T cell SARS-CoV-2 epitopes and 690 BCG B cell epitopes similar to SARS-CoV-2 B cell epitopes. The SARS-CoV-2 T cell epitopes represented 16 SARS-CoV-2 proteins, the SARS-CoV-2 B cell epitopes represented 5 SARS-CoV-2 proteins, including the receptor binding domain of the spike glycoprotein.
Conclusion:
Altogether our results provide a mechanistic basis for the potential cross-reactive adaptive immunity that may exists between the two microorganisms.
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