Personalized vaccines edge close

Among different populations, a vaccine can vary in efficacy against a specific pathogen. Unraveling the discrepancy requires tools to analyze the exact nature of responses by a specific type of immune cell: the T cell. Now, a research team from Singapore and the United States has developed an approach that simultaneously identifies and characterizes T cells specific to a variety of antigens (“Combinatorial tetramer staining and mass cytometry analysis facilitate T-cell epitope mapping and characterization”) — the part of the pathogen recognized by the immune system. The work could lead to more personalized and thus effective vaccine designs. “[Our] approach can be applied to the study of any vaccine that elicits a T-cell response, allowing for an in-depth analysis of the breadth and quality of the antigen-specific T-cell response,” says Evan Newell of the A*STAR Singapore Immunology Network, who led the study. The new method involves a combination of two technologies. First,...