Sera from individuals vaccinated with BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine BNT162b2 were obtained 13-15 days after the second dose. The study was approved by the Ethic committee of Ulm university (vote 31/21 – FSt/Sta). Collection of plasma samples from COVID-19 patients treated at the intensive care unit was approved by the Ethic committee of the University Medicine Göttingen (SeptImmun Study 25/4/19 Ü). For collection of plasma, Cell Preparation Tube (CPT) vacutainers with sodium citrate were used and plasma was collected as supernatant over the PBMC layer. For vaccinated patients, blood was collected in
S-Monovette® Serum Gel tubes (Sarstedt). Subsequently, the plasma and serum samples were incubated at 56°C for 30 min to inactivate putative infectious virus. For convalescent plasma, pre-screening for detection of neutralizing activity was performed on Vero76 cells using SARS-2-S- and VSV-G bearing pseudotypes as control, normalized for equal infectivity.
Hoffmann M., Arora P., Groß R., Seidel A., Hörnich B.F., Hahn A.S., Krüger N., Graichen L., Hofmann-Winkler H., Kempf A., Winkler M.S., Schulz S., Jäck H.M., Jahrsdörfer B., Schrezenmeier H., Müller M., Kleger A., Münch J, & Pöhlmann S. (2021). SARS-CoV-2 variants B.1.351 and P.1 escape from neutralizing antibodies. Cell, 184(9), 2384-2393.e12.