Seeking to overturn boundaries to the development of vaccines against pathogen outbreaks, the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF) has announced a successful study of early immune response with serious implications.
DZIF scientists at the Heinrich Pette Institute and the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) assessed the longer-term immune response for humans vaccinated with a new Ebola vaccine known as “rVSV-ZEBOV.” Taking a weakened and genetically modified version of a virus known as VSV, it expresses a glycoprotein of the Ebola virus. While little data on the immune response to that virus have been chronicled to date, the German study used technology that allowed tests to be carried out on many samples at once and statistical models to analyze those immune responses.
“Following vaccination with rVSV-ZEBOV, we identified a signature of five early innate immune markers correlating with the antibody titer four weeks after vaccination,” Anne Rechtien, DZIF scientist, physician at the UKE and lead author of the study, said.
Breaking it down, essentially what the study results have done are open new methods of pursuing improvements to vaccines. They showed that VSV triggers a quick and strong activation of the immune system, and that realization allows scientists to begin predicting efficacy of vaccines based on early immune markers.
This study represents the first time a soluble immune marker could be identified once activated early after vaccination, detected and correlate with antibody response regardless of other early immune markers.