Early Innate Immune Responses to Hepatitis B Vaccination Using Single Cell RNA Sequencing
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Single cell RNA sequencing (scRNAseq) provides a powerful tool to explore the cellular diversity of complex biological samples. We have used scRNAseq to explore the innate immune cell response (monocytes, NKs, mDCs, pDCs, neutrophils) to a single dose of the Hepatitis B vaccine to determine if any cellular signatures might correlate with vaccine responses. Clustering of the scRNAseq transcriptional profiles identified two mDC subsets with differential representation pre- and post-vaccination.
Although the numbers are small, Day 0 samples that had a relatively high proportion of the minor mDC subtype, the NDRG2-expressing mDCs, generated anti-HepB serum antibodies in response to a single vaccination dose, whereas Day 0 samples that had relatively low proportions did not. These preliminary results suggest that the relative proportions of mDC subtypes in peripheral blood may be a predictor of vaccine responses and raise the possibility that pre-conditioning patients to increase the relative proportion of NDRG2-expressing mDCs may be an effective strategy to boost vaccine efficacy.
This work is funded by the Human Vaccines Project.
Principal Investigator
Key Staff
Brian Aevermann, MS
Mark Novotny
Collaborators
Tobi Kollmann, Manish Sadarangani, Rym Ben-Othman, Cai Bing, and Aaron Liu
University of British Columbia