An open heterologous booster database for COVID-19 vaccines

The development and deployment of vaccines have played a critical role in the control and management of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although homologous vaccination regimens (i.e. vaccinations where individuals received both prime and boost from the same commercial source) were widely administered, many recent studies have shown improved protection from mix-and-match heterologous prime-boost strategies. While most ongoing studies or clinical trials only focus on single or a limited number of heterologous prime-boost regimens, the general landscape of heterologous boosting is not well established. To better study this, the OpenData Portal (ODP) team at the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) is building an open database for heterologous boost data which actively tracks the clinically tested and varied heterologous vaccination strategies.  Preprints and peer-reviewed publications were curated to aggregate in vitro activity data and metadata pertaining to homologous and heterologous vaccine regimens. This database will allow users to investigate the reported in vitro effectiveness of heterologous boosters compared to corresponding homologous boosters. Our efforts to establish the open heterologous boost database aims to provide a high-level overview of current heterologous boosting studies and contribute to the improvement of vaccination strategies for COVID-19 and other pathogens of pandemic potential in the future.