Abstract

Objective: Our goal was to elucidate a potential molecular link between the past and current tuberculosis vaccine Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG; a live attenuated strain of Mycobacterium bovis) immunization policies and COVID-19.

Methods: Our sequence homology analyses have demonstrated that there is an intriguing level of sequence homology between a few of the BCG and Sars-CoV-2 proteins.

Results: The data suggest that the BCG-specific memory B-cells that are preserved in BCG-vaccinated patients cross-recognize SARS-CoV-2 and that this cross-recognition may affect the virus proliferation and COVID-19 severity.

Conclusion: Our results can stimulate the sharply focused follow-up experimental studies.

Keywords: Covid-19, BCG vaccination, Sars-CoV-2 B-cell epitopes, bioinformatics analysis, tuberculosis vaccine, Mycobacterium bovis.