VIP Signature Study

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  Vaccination In Pregnancy gene Signature: VIP Signature Study

• IRAS ID

  219305

• Contact name

  Christine Jones

• Contact email

  c.e.jones@soton.ac.uk

• Sponsor organisation

  St George's, University of London

• Duration of Study in the UK

  0 years, 4 months, 10 days

• Research summary

  Vaccinations play a vital role in protecting individuals and promoting population health, but there is a continued need for new and improved vaccines to be developed and this process of design and development can be both slow and expensive. The BioVacSafe project has been designed to develop tools which can be used to better understand individual responses to vaccines and predict adverse events. These tools can then be used in the development of new vaccines with the aim of streamlining this process. To develop these techniques it is important to have detailed information about vaccine responses in different populations.
  We are doing this study to investigate the response to a whooping cough vaccine in pregnant women. We will analyse gene expression profiles in the blood of pregnant women in response to vaccination. Studying this response we will enable us to get a better understanding about vaccine safety in relation to pregnancy. This is particularly important in pregnant women because changes in the immune system during pregnancy are likely to affect the response to vaccination. The whooping cough vaccine has been chosen as it is part of routine care in the UK during pregnancy. Vaccination in pregnancy is becoming increasingly important because of the benefits to women and their infants and increasing our understanding of vaccine responses in pregnancy will help us to develop better vaccines for this population. In this study we are not collecting genetic information to look for specific conditions either in the mother or the child, but to look at changes in immune related genes following vaccination.

• REC name

  London - Dulwich Research Ethics Committee

• REC reference

  17/LO/0698

• Date of REC Opinion

  8 May 2017

• REC opinion

  Further Information Favourable Opinion