Seasonal flu shotFLICKR, USACE EUROPE DISTRICT, CAROLE E. DAVIS
Measuring gene and protein expression levels throughout the body, researchers can predict who will muster up a rousing immune response to the flu virus just a few days after vaccination, and presumably be better protected against a subsequent infection. The findings, published yesterday (July 10) in Nature Immunology, could explain why vaccines work in some patients but not others, and provide general principles to determine which vaccines will be most effective in a given population.
The approach—using system-wide expression data to predict immune response—is new, and could lead to improved vaccine development, said Sanae Sasaki, an immunologist at Stanford University, who was not involved in the study. “If they can find a key factor that is related [to] immune response, maybe they can find an ...
