Associated organisationsLondon School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine · The Francis Crick Institute · University College London · University of Ghana · University of the West Indies, Jamaica · University of the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago · West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious PathogensEurope PMC affiliations are not treated as award recipients or mapped locations.
Funding£3.1M
PeriodFeb 2023 — Feb 2026
In plain English
AI plain-English summary
Three prospective cohort studies—one in West Africa, one in the West Indies, and one in West London—are pooling data from vaccinated adults to figure out why immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 variants differ so much across these populations, despite shared ancestry and the same vaccine. This matters because most COVID-19 research has focused on high-income countries, leaving large swaths of the global south with little data on how prior infections, other coronaviruses, malaria, or genetic factors shape immunity. The WWW Consortium will test four specific hypotheses—exposure to earlier SARS-CoV-2 variants, other bat and human coronaviruses, malaria, and host immunoreactivity—to explain the observed heterogeneity. If successful, the project will produce predictive models of immune responses that work even with limited datasets, making them usable in low- and middle-income settings. This could directly inform future pandemic surveillance and vaccine strategy in regions currently underserved by research. The work is fundamentally curiosity-driven immunology, but understanding why immunity varies by geography and ancestry could lead to more equitable vaccine design and outbreak response—a practical payoff from answering a basic question about human biology.
View original technical description
Our proposed WWW Consortium brings together three prospective cohort studies of healthy adults in receipt of COVID-19 vaccination in West Africa, the West Indies, and West London to answer fundamental questions in the immunology of SARS-CoV-2 variants. Given the diverse outcomes of COVID-19 in our respective locations, despite many overlapping characteristics such as shared genetic ancestry and AZD1222 vaccination, we have power to make a significant contribution to understanding the mechanisms underlying the apparent heterogeneity in our cohorts. We have 3 aims: - Harmonise our studies to determine the breadth of immunity to SARS-CoV-2 variants by transferring assay and modelling capacity between sites, while also genotype participants to enable comparison across our mixed-ancestry populations; - Test four hypotheses that may contribute to breadth within and between our cohorts: exposure to prior SARS-CoV-2 variants, to other bat & human coronaviruses, to malaria, and to host immunoreactivity; and - Build models of immune responses to variants that incorporating individual-level data and are applicable in LMIC settings with limited datasets. Together, our work will provide insights into the factors that drive the complex immunology to SARS-CoV-2 variants that can also inform future pandemic response in regions currently underserved by both research and surveillance capacity.
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