- Lu, Changrui;
- Zhang, Yuntao;
- Liu, Xiaohu;
- Hou, Fujun;
- Cai, Rujie;
- Yu, Zhibin;
- Liu, Fei;
- Yang, Guohuan;
- Ding, Jun;
- Xu, Jiang;
- Hua, Xianwu;
- Cheng, Xinhua;
- Pan, Xinping;
- Liu, Lianxiao;
- Lin, Kang;
- Wang, Zejun;
- Li, Xinguo;
- Lu, Jia;
- Zhang, Qiu;
- Li, Yuwei;
- Hu, Chunxia;
- Fan, Huifen;
- Liu, Xiaoke;
- Wang, Hui;
- Jia, Rui;
- Xu, Fangjingwei;
- Wang, Xuewei;
- Huang, Hongwei;
- Zhao, Ronghua;
- Li, Jing;
- Cheng, Hang;
- Jia, William;
- Yang, Xiaoming
The coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has mutated quickly and caused significant global damage. This study characterizes two mRNA vaccines ZSVG-02 (Delta) and ZSVG-02-O (Omicron BA.1), and associating heterologous prime-boost strategy following the prime of a most widely administrated inactivated whole-virus vaccine (BBIBP-CorV). The ZSVG-02-O induces neutralizing antibodies that effectively cross-react with Omicron subvariants. In naïve animals, ZSVG-02 or ZSVG-02-O induce humoral responses skewed to the vaccines targeting strains, but cellular immune responses cross-react to all variants of concern (VOCs) tested. Following heterologous prime-boost regimes, animals present comparable neutralizing antibody levels and superior protection against Delta and Omicron BA.1variants. Single-boost only generated ancestral and omicron dual-responsive antibodies, probably by recall and reshape the prime immunity. New Omicron-specific antibody populations, however, appeared only following the second boost with ZSVG-02-O. Overall, our results support a heterologous boost with ZSVG-02-O, providing the best protection against current VOCs in inactivated virus vaccine-primed populations.