Front immune: big data helps design better influenza vaccine

December 1, 2019 / BIOON / -- every year, thousands of Americans get sick from flu, thousands of people are hospitalized or die Influenza vaccination can reduce the chance of infection However, according to the Centers for Disease Control and prevention, the vaccine is only effective for 40% to 60% of the time at best Now, researchers at Michigan State University have data on how RNA levels in cells change after infection or vaccination Their work can help make future influenza vaccines work better, and even help design universal vaccines "Understanding these differences may help us identify new goals for building better vaccines and help us find better ways to treat the disease," said George MIAs, assistant professor of Biochemistry and molecular biology and director of systems biology MIAs and collaborators reanalyzed data from 18 previously published studies in which scientists collected blood samples from influenza patients and vaccinators and studied the gene expression of these samples "The motivation for merging different data is that usually smaller data will not be statistically sufficient to detect significant differences," says MIAs (image source: www Pixabay Com) the researchers found 978 genes, their influenza infection and the expression of influenza vaccine have changed About one-third (334) of these genes overlap, while about two-thirds (644) are specific to influenza infections or vaccines Different genes participate in different processes of human body For example, in influenza infection, different genes are expressed to participate in the defense mechanism of human body On the other hand, the genes specially expressed in vaccination participate in antigen processing, thus stimulating the immune response of human body The researchers also found 907 age-related genes and 48 gender related genes that affect changes in disease / vaccine gene expression Understanding these differences can help scientists seek to develop universal vaccines Currently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends high-dose vaccines to people over 65 years old because their immune system needs more stimulation to produce the necessary antibodies to protect them from the flu virus MIAs and his collaborators hope that their results will be the starting point for future research by providing gene targets that can be further explored through animal models or human research using new RNA sequencing techniques Source of information: building a better flu shot original source: Lavida R K Rogers, Gustavo de Los Campos, George I MIAs Microarray gene expression dataset re analysis findings variables in infection and prevention Frontiers in immunology, 2019; 10 doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2019.02616