SARS-CoV-2 Epitopes following Infection and Vaccination Overlap Known Neutralizing Antibody Sites

Identification of epitopes targeted following virus infection or vaccination can guide vaccine design and development of therapeutic interventions targeting functional sites,but can be laborious.Herein,we employed peptide microarrays to map linear peptide epitopes(LPEs)recognized following SARS-CoV-2 infetion and vaccination.LPEs detected by nonhuman primate(NHP)and patient IgMs after SARS-CoV-2 infection extensively overlapped,localized to functionally important virus regions,and aligned with reported neutralizing antibody binding sies.Similar LPE overlap occurred atfter infection and vaccination,with LPE clusters specifc to each stimulus,where strong and conserved LPEs mapping to sites known or likely to inhibit spike protein function.Vaccine-specifc LPEs tended to map to sites known or likely to be afected by structural changes induced by the proline substitutions in the mRNA vaccine's S protein.Mapping LPEs to regions of known functional importance in this manner may acelerate vaccine evaluation and discovery of targets for sile secific therapeutic interventions.