About this Research Topic
One of the main challenges in vaccine development is the establishment of correlates of protection, which are a set of specific immune responses related to protective functions that quantify the vaccine efficacy. Currently, the gold standard of correlates of protection is based on antibody measurements. However, many subjects with a compromised immune system do not respond to vaccination. This is particularly true for SARS-CoV-2 immune regimes for which antibody tests cannot be used to evaluate a person’s level of immunity or protection against COVID-19. Without correlates of protection, serological tests cannot confirm immunity, leaving a gap in evidence in public health policy. If the antibody response cannot be detected after vaccination, it is recognized that the vaccine can still provide protection through cell immunity, such as the T-cell response.
For this reason, the discovery of new correlates of protection is urgent and can be achieved through a better understanding of the mechanism of protection induced by immunization regimes. The immune complexity has as a consequence the fact that there is not only one factor that stands alone in the induction of protection. Single-cell omics technologies represent a powerful tool that has been employed for the discovery of novel disease biomarkers, new cellular sub-populations, therapeutic targets, and diagnostic markers. Applied to vaccine studies, single-cell omics have the potential to discover new mechanistic correlates of protection through the combination of different measurements of the immune state, which will provide opportunities to characterize the complexities of the immune response. These insights can be used to detect previously unseen correlates for use in the assessment of vaccine immunogenicity.
This Research Topic aims to stimulate the discussion around the advances in the area of single-cell omics applied to gain further insights into the mechanism of vaccine immune response to enhance the discovery of mechanistic correlates of protection and discerning the heterogeneous response between patients.
We are interested in the submission of Original Research, Review, Mini-review, Perspective, and methodological articles, focusing on, but not limited to, the following sub-topics:
• Advances in the use of single-cell Omics approach applied to vaccine research
• Advances in the use of single-cell Omics approach to establish a new correlate of protection
• Advances in the use of single-cell Omics approach to understand the mechanism of action of the vaccine
• Advances in the use of single-cell Omics approaches to identify specific profiles of non-responder individuals
• Advances in the use of single-cell Omics data for the development of new bioinformatics tools for predicting the results of vaccination.
For this reason, the discovery of new correlates of protection is urgent and can be achieved through a better understanding of the mechanism of protection induced by immunization regimes. The immune complexity has as a consequence the fact that there is not only one factor that stands alone in the induction of protection. Single-cell omics technologies represent a powerful tool that has been employed for the discovery of novel disease biomarkers, new cellular sub-populations, therapeutic targets, and diagnostic markers. Applied to vaccine studies, single-cell omics have the potential to discover new mechanistic correlates of protection through the combination of different measurements of the immune state, which will provide opportunities to characterize the complexities of the immune response. These insights can be used to detect previously unseen correlates for use in the assessment of vaccine immunogenicity.
This Research Topic aims to stimulate the discussion around the advances in the area of single-cell omics applied to gain further insights into the mechanism of vaccine immune response to enhance the discovery of mechanistic correlates of protection and discerning the heterogeneous response between patients.
We are interested in the submission of Original Research, Review, Mini-review, Perspective, and methodological articles, focusing on, but not limited to, the following sub-topics:
• Advances in the use of single-cell Omics approach applied to vaccine research
• Advances in the use of single-cell Omics approach to establish a new correlate of protection
• Advances in the use of single-cell Omics approach to understand the mechanism of action of the vaccine
• Advances in the use of single-cell Omics approaches to identify specific profiles of non-responder individuals
• Advances in the use of single-cell Omics data for the development of new bioinformatics tools for predicting the results of vaccination.
Keywords: single-cell RNAseq, vaccine, correlate of protection, single-cell omics, immunology
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
