Preserved magnitude and breadth of T cell immunity to SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination in inflammatory bowel disease patients treated with anti-cytokine biologics

The widespread vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 offered an opporunity to investigate the effects of anti-cytokine biologics on the cellular responses to a specific vaccination. Previous research has demonstrated inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients treated with anti-TNF agents exhibit decreased Spike (S)-specific antibody responses compared to IBD patients treated with anti-IL-12/23 or healthy controls, even after four doses of mRNA vaccine (Cheung et al. JCI 2025). Less is known about the impacts of anti-TNF and anti-IL-12/23 therapy on T cell responses to vaccination, although previous research in our group has demonstrated that T cells responses in patients treated with anti-TNF or anti-IL-12/23 tend to wane quicker after two vaccine doses, compared to healthy controls (Dayam, Law, et al. JCI Insight 2023). To further examine the phenotype of and breadth of memory T cell responses to SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination, here we performed immune profiling of S-specific memory T cells, isolated from anti-TNF treated- or anti-IL-12/23- treated IBD patients and healthy controls from timepoints after two and three vaccine doses, via 5' single cell RNA-sequencing (with CITE-sequencing for hashtags only) and TCR-sequencing.