West Africa, West Indies, West London: Mechanisms driving heterogeneity in immunity to SARS-CoV-2 variants
Year of award: 2022
Grantholders
Dr Adam Kucharski
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, United Kingdom
Dr David Bauer
The Francis Crick Institute, United Kingdom
Dr Emma Wall
University College London, United Kingdom
Dr Yaw Bediako
West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens, Ghana
Prof Gordon Awandare
University of Ghana, Ghana
Dr C V F Carrington
University of the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago, Trinidad & Tobago
Dr Peter Quashie
University of Ghana, Ghana
Dr Joshua Anzinger
University of the West Indies, Jamaica, Jamaica
Project summary
Our proposed WWW Consortium brings together three prospective cohort studies of healthy adults in receipt of COVID-19 vaccination in West Africa, the West Indies, and West London to answer fundamental questions in the immunology of SARS-CoV-2 variants. Given the diverse outcomes of COVID-19 in our respective locations, despite many overlapping characteristics such as shared genetic ancestry and AZD1222 vaccination, we have power to make a significant contribution to understanding the mechanisms underlying the apparent heterogeneity in our cohorts. We have 3 aims: - Harmonise our studies to determine the breadth of immunity to SARS-CoV-2 variants by transferring assay and modelling capacity between sites, while also genotype participants to enable comparison across our mixed-ancestry populations; - Test four hypotheses that may contribute to breadth within and between our cohorts: exposure to prior SARS-CoV-2 variants, to other bat & human coronaviruses, to malaria, and to host immunoreactivity; and - Build models of immune responses to variants that incorporating individual-level data and are applicable in LMIC settings with limited datasets. Together, our work will provide insights into the factors that drive the complex immunology to SARS-CoV-2 variants that can also inform future pandemic response in regions currently underserved by both research and surveillance capacity.