Waning antibodies and rapidly emerging variants are challenges for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) vaccine development. Adjusting existing immunization schedules and further boosting strategies are under consideration. Here, the immune responses induced by an alum-adjuvanted inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine in mice were compared among immunization schedules with two or three doses. For the two-dose schedule, a 0-28-day schedule induced 5-fold stronger spike-specific IgG responses than a 0-14-day schedule, with only a slight elevation of spike-specific cellular immunity 14 days after the last immunization. A third homologous boost 2 or 5 months after the second dose for the 0-28-day schedule slightly strengthened humoral responses (1.3-fold for the 0-1-3-month schedule, and 1.8-fold for the 0-1-6-month schedule) 14 days after the last immunization. Additionally, a third homologous boost (especially with the 0-1-3-month schedule) induced significantly stronger cell-mediated immunity than both two-dose immunization schedules for all indexes tested, with a response similar to that induced by a one-dose heterologous boost with BNT162b2 in clinical trials, according to cellular immunity analysis (1.5-fold). These T cell responses were Th2 oriented, with good CD4+ and CD8+ memory. These results may offer clues for applying a homologous boosting strategy for alum-adjuvanted inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccines.
Keywords: alum-adjuvanted inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine; boost; cellular immunity; humoral response; immunization schedule; memory.
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