SARS-CoV-2 infection in immunosuppression evolves sub-lineages which independently accumulate neutralization escape mutations

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Lustig, Gila
Ganga, Yashica
Rodel, Hylton E
Tegally, Houriiyah
Khairallah, Afrah
Jackson, Laurelle
Cele, Sandile
Khan, Khadija
Jule, Zesuliwe
Reedoy, Kajal
Karim, Farina
Bernstein, Mallory
Ndung’u, Thumbi
Moosa, Mahomed-Yunus S
Archary, Derseree
et al.
Griffith University Author(s)
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2024
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Abstract

One mechanism of variant formation may be evolution during long-term infection in immunosuppressed people. To understand the viral phenotypes evolved during such infection, we tested SARS-CoV-2 viruses evolved from an ancestral B.1 lineage infection lasting over 190 days post-diagnosis in an advanced HIV disease immunosuppressed individual. Sequence and phylogenetic analysis showed two evolving sub-lineages, with the second sub-lineage replacing the first sub-lineage in a seeming evolutionary sweep. Each sub-lineage independently evolved escape from neutralizing antibodies. The most evolved virus for the first sub-lineage (isolated day 34) and the second sub-lineage (isolated day 190) showed similar escape from ancestral SARS-CoV-2 and Delta-variant infection elicited neutralizing immunity despite having no spike mutations in common relative to the B.1 lineage. The day 190 isolate also evolved higher cell–cell fusion and faster viral replication and caused more cell death relative to virus isolated soon after diagnosis, though cell death was similar to day 34 first sub-lineage virus. These data show that SARS-CoV-2 strains in prolonged infection in a single individual can follow independent evolutionary trajectories which lead to neutralization escape and other changes in viral properties.

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Virus Evolution

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10

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1

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© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Microbiology

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Lustig, G; Ganga, Y; Rodel, HE; Tegally, H; Khairallah, A; Jackson, L; Cele, S; Khan, K; Jule, Z; Reedoy, K; Karim, F; Bernstein, M; Ndung’u, T; Moosa, M-YS; Archary, D; et al., SARS-CoV-2 infection in immunosuppression evolves sub-lineages which independently accumulate neutralization escape mutations, Virus Evolution, 2024, 10 (1)

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