A study conducted by researchers at the Emory Vaccine Center has revealed a method to predict whether a person will produce high levels of antibodies in response to a flu shot a few days after receiving it. The study results appeared online in the Nature Immunology journal on July 10.
The researchers performed a scan of the extent to which carefully chosen genes convert into white blood cells and gave a prediction on the third day, with an accuracy of up to 90%, about the persons’ whose bodies will make high levels of antibodies in response to a standard flu shot four weeks after receiving it.
According to senior study author Bali Pulendran, PhD, professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at Emory University School of Medicine and Yerkes National Primate Research Center, “It often takes several weeks after vaccination for an individual to develop sufficient levels of protective antibodies against the influenza virus. The ability to predict who will meet these criteria within a few days after vaccination and identify non-responders would be of great value from a public health perspective.”
He further said: “We envision that these predictive signatures could guide the rapid development of vaccines against emerging infections, and aid in the monitoring of suboptimal immune responses in the elderly, infants or people with weakened immune systems.”
The research team approach involved immunology, bioinformatics, and genomics. They based their predictive model on a series of clinical studies conducted in the annual flu seasons in 07, 08 and 09.
The study involved healthy young adults who received a standard flu shot. Others received live attenuated vaccine administered through the nose. After a comprehensive survey of the activity levels of each human gene present in samples of the participants, the researchers found a change in the activity of several genes playing a role in innate immunity, interferon as well as reactive oxygen species signaling after the vaccination. They were also able to identify genes in the “unfolded protein response,” required by cells for adapting to the stress of producing high levels of antibodies.
The data of the study participants from one season was used for “training” a computer model in identification of small gene groups that are capable of predicting low and high responders. Later, the research team examined whether the model was capable of forecasting which subjects would be low responders and which will be high responders in the two other seasons.
“The main goal of our study was to demonstrate the feasibility of predicting how strongly a vaccine will stimulate the immune system,” Pulendran states. “Along the way, we have developed an assay that focuses on a handful of genes, which could be the basis for a customized vaccine chip to make these predictions cost-effectively.”
Due to a comprehensive systems biology approach, the research team discovered new gene functions.
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