25 Questions
What are the two main components of the immune system?
Innate immunity and adaptive immunity
What are the two branches of adaptive immunity?
Cellular and humoral
What are some of the regulatory requirements in systems vaccinology?
Transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and systems serology
how are TLR activated and What is the role of Toll-like receptors (TLR) in the innate immune system?
TLRs are activated by pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) to detect bacteria and viruses.
What is the main function of dendritic cells in the immune system?
Antigen presentation and communication with the adaptive immune system
What ex factor contributes to the diversity of the immune system?
Biological sex
What is the difference between innate immunity and adaptive immunity?
Innate immunity is non-specific, while adaptive immunity is specific and involves the production of antibodies and T cells.
How does most licensed vaccines work in terms of eliciting a response?
Most licensed vaccines work by eliciting a humoral response, which involves the production of antibodies.
What are the two main applications of Systems Vaccinology?
The two main applications are identification of early immune markers and study of mechanisms of action and adverse effects.
What are the pitfalls faced by Systems Vaccinology during its development?
The pitfalls include long timelines for safety, immunogenicity, and efficacy testing.
What are the phases involved in regulatory submission for vaccine development?
The phases include safety testing, immunogenicity evaluation, and clinical trials.
What has been the traditional focus of vaccine development, but is now gaining increasing interest?
The humoral immune response has been the traditional focus, but there is increasing interest in cellular immune responses.
What is systems vaccinology?
Systems vaccinology is an approach that uses the principles of systems biology to understand vaccination's effect on the immune system and immune responses.
What is the role of transcriptomics in systems vaccinology?
Transcriptomics involves RNA sequencing to detect differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and identify pathways related to vaccine-induced immune responses.
How does proteomics contribute to systems vaccinology?
Proteomics focuses on clinical characterization of the inflammatory response, including cytokine measurements and determination of the correct conformation of antigens for effective immune response.
What is the focus of metabolomics in systems vaccinology?
Metabolomics examines the impact of lipids, bile acids, and other molecules on immune response and diseases.
How does systems serology contribute to understanding vaccine protection?
Systems serology investigates the role of humoral immunity in vaccine protection, with flexible high-throughput assays and computational analysis to understand functional antibodies.
What are some key findings of systems vaccinology?
Key findings suggest that early immune markers and molecular signatures, such as patterns of gene expression after vaccination, can predict vaccine efficacy and help determine protective immunity.
What are the potential biomarkers for predicting reactogenicity of licensed antiviral vaccines?
T°, Pulse, CRP, PTX3
What does systems vaccinology aim to identify as a predictor of vaccine-induced antibody responses?
Molecular signatures, such as patterns of gene expression after vaccination
What is the definition of correlate of protection in the context of vaccine-induced immunity?
A type and amount of immunological response that correlates with vaccine-induced protection against an infectious disease and that is considered predictive of clinical efficacy.
How does the concept of correlate of protection contribute to vaccine development and evaluation?
It provides a specific immunological target that can be used to assess the effectiveness of a vaccine and predict its clinical efficacy.
Explain RNA sequencing
- Isolate RNA from samples
- fragment RNA into short segments
- Covert RNA fragments into cDNA
- Ligate sequencing adapters and amplify
- Perform NGS sequencing
- Map sequencing reads to the transcriptome / genom
What are the two critical features that make blood and PBMCs suitable for studying vaccine efficacy?
Blood and PBMCs are easily accessible and Immune cells are uniquely sensitive
What are the main characteristics of immune cells that make them uniquely sensitive, and how does this sensitivity contribute to vaccine research?
Immune cells are uniquely sensitive, and their sensitivity contributes to easy comparison of gene expression pre- and post-vaccination
Study Notes
- Systems vaccinology is an approach that uses the principles of systems biology to understand vaccination's effect on the immune system and immune responses.
- It integrates various omics-techniques including transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and systems serology.
- Transcriptomics involves RNA sequencing to detect differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and identify pathways related to vaccine-induced immune responses.
- Single-cell technologies, such as spatial transcriptomics, are used to study antigen-specific T cells and their response to vaccines.
- Proteomics focuses on clinical characterization of the inflammatory response, including cytokine measurements and determination of the correct conformation of antigens for effective immune response.
- Metabolomics examines the impact of lipids, bile acids, and other molecules on immune response and diseases.
- Epigenetics, including single-cell ATAC sequencing, study chromatin accessibility and transcription factor binding to determine gene regulatory networks.
- Multi-omics techniques, such as CITE-seq, are used to interrogate humoral immunity and identify antibody subclasses and glycosylation.
- Systems serology investigates the role of humoral immunity in vaccine protection, with flexible high-throughput assays and computational analysis to understand functional antibodies.
- Key findings suggest that early immune markers and molecular signatures, such as patterns of gene expression after vaccination, can predict vaccine efficacy and help determine protective immunity.
- Systems vaccinology can also be used to study mechanisms of action and adverse events by determining the activation of innate immune responses.
- There may be common predictors of vaccine-induced antibody responses across various vaccines and timepoints, providing opportunities for predictive vaccine efficacy.
- Differential kinetics and vaccine-specific timepoints can confound the identification of a universal predictive signature, highlighting the importance of considering vaccine-specific factors.
Test your knowledge of systems vaccinology methods including transcriptomics, bulk and single-cell sequencing, TCR/BCR repertoire analysis, proteomics, metabolomics, epigenetics, multi-omics, serology, and computational immunology.
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