Engineering synthetic vaccines using cues from natural immunity

By D. Irvine, M. Swartz, G. Szeto. 2013

556 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Vaccines aim to protect against or treat diseases through manipulation of the immune response, promoting either immunity or tolerance. The former generate antibodies and T-cells poised to protect against future pathogen encounter or attack diseased cells such as tumors; the latter, which are far less developed, block pathogenic autoreactive T-cells and autoantibodies that target self tissue. Enormous challenges remain, however, as a consequence of our incomplete understanding of human immunity. A rapidly growing field of research is the design of synthetic materials in vaccines to 1) target organs, tissues, cells, or intracellular compartments; 2) co-deliver immunomodulatory signals that control the quality of the immune response; or 3) directly act as immune regulators, and there exists great potential for well-defined materials to further our understanding of immunity. Here we describe recent advances in the design of synthetic materials to direct immune responses, highlighting successes and challenges in prophylactic, therapeutic, and tolerance-inducing vaccines.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Immunology, Molecular Biology

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Biomedical Engineering

In Immunology

In Molecular Biology

Citations in the corpus

Induction of Potent Neutralizing Antibody Responses by a Designed Protein Nanoparticle Vaccine for Respiratory Syncytial Virus (2019, background): “This effect is thought to derivemainly fromstrongerB cell activation through antigen-driven cross-linking of B cell receptors (BCRs) (Bachmann and Jennings, 2010), although potential effects on antigen trafficking and localization may also play a role (Irvine et al., 2013).”
Tailored design of protein nanoparticle scaffolds for multivalent presentation of viral glycoprotein antigens (2020, background): “This has been attributed to increased cross-linking of antigen-specific B cell receptors at the cell surface and modulation of immunogen trafficking to and within lymph nodes (Irvine et al., 2013; Tokatlian et al., 2019).”
Rational Design of an Epstein-Barr Virus Vaccine Targeting the Receptor-Binding Site (2015, unknown): “The diameter of D123-ferritin and D123-encapsulin particles are within 20–50 nm, and therefore both are likely to traffic through lymph nodes similarly, where they would be taken up by dendritic cells, B cells, and macrophages (Irvine et al., 2013).”