The development and evaluation of vaccines have been revolutionized by the advent of high-dimensional technologies like mass cytometry. This chapter explores how CyTOF has transformed our understanding of vaccine-induced immune responses, the identification of correlates of protection, and the optimization of vaccine formulations.
Assessing Vaccine-Induced Immune Responses
Mass cytometry has provided unprecedented insights into the complexity of vaccine-induced immune responses. The landmark study by Newell et al. (2013) in Immunity, “Cytometry by time-of-flight shows combinatorial cytokine expression and virus-specific cell niches within a continuum of CD8+ T cell phenotypes,” demonstrated the power of CyTOF in revealing the intricate landscape of T cell responses following vaccination. This work showed that vaccine-induced T cells exist in a continuum of phenotypes rather than discrete subsets, challenging our previous understanding of cellular immunity.
In the context of COVID-19 vaccine development, Arunachalam et al. (2021) published a pivotal study in Nature cited over 1100 times, “Systems biological assessment of immunity to mild versus severe COVID-19 infection in humans.” Using high-dimensional flow cytometry, they characterized immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection and vaccination, providing crucial insights that informed vaccine development strategies.
Identifying Correlates of Protection
One of the most challenging aspects of vaccine development is identifying reliable correlates of protection. CyTOF has proven invaluable in this pursuit.
A study by Kotliarov et al. (2020) in Nature Medicine, “Broad immune activation underlies shared set point signatures for vaccine responsiveness in healthy individuals and disease activity in patients with lupus,” used CITE-seq to identify shared immune signatures that predict vaccine responsiveness. This work has implications not only for vaccine development but also for understanding autoimmune diseases.
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