Investigating Variation in Response to Vaccines Using Single-Cell RNA-Sequencing

Senjuti Saha of the Child Health Research Foundation in Bangladesh will use a single-cell analytics platform to track the immune responses of babies before and after receiving a pneumococcal conjugate vaccine to determine the impact of various factors, including nutritional status and seasonality, on vaccine efficacy. Vaccines have successfully reduced childhood morbidity and mortality; however, their efficacy can be influenced by host factors and extrinsic factors through unknown cellular mechanisms. They will recruit 50 newborns in a rural district north of Dhaka and collect blood and nasopharyngeal swabs before, during and after a routine vaccination series. They will extract peripheral blood mononuclear cells and use them to perform single-cell RNA sequencing to identify cell subtypes and link differential vaccine responses to factors including gestational age, nutritional status and sex.