B Cell and Antibody Responses to Human Coronaviruses in Africa
The goal of this project is to characterize immune responses of populations in Africa to SARS-CoV-2 and other human coronaviruses (HCoVs) as well as to COVID-19 vaccination. Results will be compared to available data from U.S. COVID-19 patients and vaccinees. Specific objectives are to (i) determine the prevalence and longitudinal development of serum and saliva antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 and HCoVs in individuals from rural and urban areas, (ii) conduct a detailed analysis of antibody specificities and effector functions in samples from study participants, and (iii) analyze clonal B cell lineages in study participants to identify characteristics of class switching, immunoglobulin heavy (IGH) chain gene segment usage, and IGH complementarity-determining region-3 length and somatic hypermutation