Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine protects monkeys without inducing CD8+ T cell responses

Non-human primate data from NIAID and Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine argue that vaccine-induced neutralizing antibodies alone may be enough to achieve sterilizing immunity, though the findings do not rule out important roles for cytotoxic T cells.

As COVID-19 vaccine developers seek correlates of protection that can give an early read on how their candidates are working, an open question is the relative importance of humoral and cellular immune responses. ...