Population-Predicted MHCII-Epitope Presentation of SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein Correlates to the Case Fatality Rates of COVID-19 in Different Countries

Abstract

SARS-CoV-2 virus causes severe respiratory syndrome COVID-19. It has turned from an epidemic in the Wuhan region of China into a pandemic. We present here current data from the ongoing analysis of this virus including epidemiological and immunological analysis. We calculated correlative data of infection spread for different countries based on public data from the beginning of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic until the first week of April 2020. We observe clear differences in SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID19-related lethality for different countries. To investigate, whether the observed differences – besides different approaches in infection control in different countries - might also be related to differences in the predicted immune response against SARS-CoV-2 in different populations, we scanned the viral proteins for predicted linear B- and T-cell epitopes using the TepiTool and Bepipred Software tools and determined population-related differences in predicted epitope presentation using the population coverage tool of IEDB.

We observed substantial differences in predicted MHCII epitope presentation of SARS-CoV-2 proteins for different populations but only minor differences in predicted MHCI epitope presentation. A comparison of this predicted epitope MHC-coverage revealed a significant negative correlation with the case fatality rate observed in different populations for MHCII-presentation of the viral spike protein (p = 0.0095, R² = 0.4154 for linear regression) and the membrane protein (p = 0.0242, R² = 0.3334 for linear regression), indicating that the high case fatality rates of COVID-19 observed in some countries might be related with poor MHCII-presentation and hence weak humoral immune response against the envelope proteins of SARS-CoV-2.Our results highlight the importance of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein in immunological control and should encourage further studies on MHCII-alleles as potential risk factors in CoViD19-disease.

Funding Statement: Land Bavaria to DFG project number 324392634–TRR 221/INF.

Declaration of Interests: All authors (CL, EB, ES, PN, CS, TD) declare that they have no conflict of interest (neither financial nor relationships with other people or organisations or other matters conflicting).