FluPRINT Study
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Characterisation of the immune & transcriptional responses to live attenuated influenza vaccine (LAIV) in healthy 2-6-year-old children.
IRAS ID
249777
Contact name
Andrew Pollard
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Clinical Trials and Research Governance (CTRG), University of Oxford
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Research Summary
In 2013 the UK government introduced the nasal flu spray vaccine (Fluenz Tetra®) for use in children from 24 months to less than 18 years of age. This is a licensed vaccine that is safe, effective and like the injectable vaccine, needs to be given yearly. There is evidence that the nasal spray flu vaccine can offer better protection for children than the injectable flu vaccine but it is not yet fully understood why this is so.
When the immune system responds to an infection or a vaccine, specific ‘immune response’ genes are activated or ‘switched on’. This process is called gene expression and different types of immune responses cause the activation of different genes. This study is looking at how specific parts of the immune system like B and T cells respond to the nasal spray vaccine and how and what genes are activated by the vaccine. B cells make antibodies, a part of our immune system that helps to protect against invaders such as viruses or bacteria. The next time our bodies are exposed to the same invader, our B cells make antibodies that can recognise and stop the invader going on to cause an infection. Our T cells can help B cells to make antibodies and also help to direct the body to attack the invader instead of causing harm to healthy cells.Summary of Results
The goal of this project was to study how healthy 4-6-year-old children respond to live attenuated influenza vaccine (LAIV), a type of flu vaccine. The flu vaccine can prevent people from getting sick and stop the spread of the virus, which can help prevent future outbreaks of the disease. However, the flu vaccine does not always work, even for healthy people. Scientists don't yet fully understand how the immune system protects against the flu and which parts of the immune system are important for this. Learning more about this could help make better flu vaccines and prevent future outbreaks.
In this project, to learn more about how LAIV is mediating protection in children, we have used a new method, called "systems immunology”. The systems immunology technique combines systems-level analysis of different aspect of immunity allowing us to study hundreds of things, including how genes and proteins work, types of cells in the immune system, and how well they function in response to vaccination. We have used a special technique called mass cytometry (CyTOF) to study the activity of immune cells. Also, we have investigated how genes (based on transcriptome analysis) and proteins (based on proteomics analysis) in the blood change before and after vaccination and compare the response of children who have never been vaccinated to those who have. Finally, we used computational analysis based on machine learning algorithms, called SIMON to combine all these data and study the immune system in all its complexity. Such integrative analysis allowed us to identify immune cells and genes/proteins that are important for protection against the flu and that can be used as potential new targets to develop better flu vaccines.REC name
East Midlands - Nottingham 1 Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
18/EM/0373
Date of REC Opinion
18 Dec 2018
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion