The immunological pain of childbirth
Birth is a traumatic event, immunologically speaking. Babies
go from the controlled environment of the womb where everything is filtered out
by the mother to the bacteria, virus and fungus filled world. All of which is
new to the baby, some of which can kill the baby, but most of which is
harmless. We are slowly improving our understanding of how babies respond to
this new environment and this is particularly important in the development of
vaccines. In a recent paper by Beatris Mastelic Gavillet et al (sciency way of saying and others) published in the Journal of Immunology that I was fortunate enough to contribute
to, the vaccine response in early life was explored.
Adjuvants improve vaccines
The paper demonstrates that normally vaccine responses in
early life are poor, but the addition of MF-59 significantly boosts the vaccine
response. What is MF-59? It is one of a class of drugs called
adjuvants, which are added to vaccines to improve the immune response to them.
They work by a variety of mechanisms, but very broadly speaking they act as a
red flag to the body to say that the vaccine is foreign and that it would be
good to mount an immune response to it. The paper drilled down further into the
type of response and the lead authors found that a specific white blood cell
called a
T follicular helper or Tfh was central to this. Our understanding
about these Tfh is relatively recent, but they appear to be critical in helping
another white cell called the B cell make antibodies. My lab’s contribution to the paper was to
show that when the vaccine plus adjuvant was used in early life it protected
against influenza infection. This work suggests approaches to improve vaccines
in early life, either by the inclusion of safe and effective adjuvants like
MF59 or by developing novel strategies to target this vital cell (the Tfh). The
next step will be to assess these vaccines as part of the infant vaccination
schedule.
Collaborative science in the EU
My involvement in this study came about thanks to a unique
EU funded project called Aditec in which 42 research partners from both
industry and academia from 13 countries have come together to create a network
of excellence in vaccine design and development. As a relatively junior
academic, it has been a remarkable opportunity for me to work in close
proximity with world leaders whilst moving my own research forward. This kind
of opportunity would not necessarily be open if the UK were to leave the EU and
it may be a small part of the argument about the future of the UK in the EU,
but an important one, if we were to leave, it is unlikely that this level of
funding would be available and as such UK science would suffer. Something else
to think about on May 7th!
