Due to copyright issues, an electronic copy of the thesis must be ordered from the faculty. For the faculty to have time to process the order, the order must be received by the faculty at the latest 2 days before the public defence. Orders received later than 2 days before the defence will not be processed. After the public defence, please address any inquiries regarding the thesis to the candidate.
Trial Lecture – time and place
See Trial Lecture.
Adjudication committee
- First opponent: Assistant Professor Marcus Buggert, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden
- Second opponent: Vice President Vaccines & Immunology Mustafa Diken, BioNTech SE Mainz, Germany
- Third member and chair of the evaluation committee: Professor Marit Inngjerdingen, University of Oslo
Chair of the Defence
Associate Professor Johanne Jacobsen, University of Oslo
Principal Supervisor
Johanna Olweus, University of Oslo
Summary
During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 pandemic, triggered by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, global vaccination strategies are remarkably effective. However, as the pandemic progressed, viral escape from antibody responses to vaccines emerged (Variants Of Concern – VOC). Studies moreover showed that natural infection combined with vaccination provide superior immunity relative to vaccination alone. As natural infection has the possibility to provide a broader immune response from T-cells recognizing viral protein fragments (peptides) not currently included in standard vaccines, mapping of the T-cell response to infection would provide important insights into which parts of the virus have the capacity to evoke strong responses. In the thesis Isaac Blaas and co-workers found that out of 123 candidate targets in SARS-CoV-2, 29 evoked a response in CD8 T-cells in a large cohort of 83 otherwise healthy individuals. Out of these 29, a set of only nine targets could induce a response in 83% of the investigated population. Strikingly, only two of nine derived from the Spike protein utilized in commercial vaccines, indicating that broader vaccine responses could be elicited from vaccines including a wider range of viral proteins. Blaas and co-workers demonstrated that VOC are not driven by escape to T-cell immunity, and that T-cell responses are conserved among VOC. Moreover, they demonstrated that in lymphoma patients lacking antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2 vaccination due to B-cell depleting cancer treatment, T-cell responses to vaccination were comparable with those in healthy controls. This indicates that lymphoma patients benefit from standard SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines, but also that these patients might have enhanced effects if vaccines incorporating a wider range of viral targets giving T-cell responses were administered. Taken together, the thesis provides new insights into natural and vaccine-induced immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 that can improve vaccine design.
Additional information
Contact the research support staff.