Clinical Immunology and Allergy

Understanding mechanisms of vaccination

Few medical inventions have affected and saved so many lives as vaccines against infectious diseases. The challenges we are facing today with developing effective vaccines to several of the world’s most serious infectious diseases (HIV-1/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis) epidemics as well as designing therapeutic vaccines to tumors and/or allergies require a much more intimate understanding of the mechanisms dictating vaccine responses. Our group has had a long term focus on central questions in vaccinology related to how vaccine antigen, adjuvants and viral vaccine vectors influence innate immunity for the induction of strong T cell and B cell responses. A central element in our research is investigating dendritic cells (DCs). They provide the link between the innate response in the periphery and the development of T and B cells responses and their involvement is therefore likely critical to the success of a vaccine.

With a better understanding of how the immune system interacts with vaccines we would be better positioned to select formulations that can elicit stronger immunity, be used at lower doses or with fewer immunizations and are not associated with side effects. We have developed experimental in vitro systems using human primary blood and skin DCs. In addition, we characterize the immune responses in vivo after administration of selected vaccine formulations in animal models. Our strategy is to operate at a powerful infrastructure and leverage our expertise towards a translational research profile aided by our network of strong collaborators and availability to novel reagents and vaccine candidates on a clinical path.