Systems Biology-Based Platforms to Accelerate Research of Emerging Infectious Diseases

Oh, Soo-Jin; Choi, Young-Ki; Shin, Ok Sarah

Given that a vaccine usually initiates a broad, polyfunctional, and persistent immune response integrating all effector cells of the immune system, it is important for scientists to understand the complexity and dynamic and diverse quality of the immune response. 86 Therefore, innovative tools, such as using single cell technologies to 'omics' approaches, have enabled researchers to quantitatively examine entire classes of molecules at a single cell level, and should further facilitate our understanding of the functional diversity of the immune response. As shown in Fig. 1 , using systems biology tools for in- Fig. 1 . The process of systems vaccinology approaches. Systems biology approaches applied to clinical trials can lead to the generation of new hypotheses that can be tested and ultimately lead to better vaccine development. For example, correlates of vaccine-induced immunity in clinical trials can be profiled in detail with high-throughput technologies, such as RNA-sequencing, proteomics, and metabolomics. The high-throughput data thus generated can be integrated using bioinformatics tools and used to create hypotheses about the biological mechanisms underlying vaccine efficacy and immunogenicity. Such hypotheses can then be tested with animal models or in vitro human systems. The insights gained from experimentation can then guide the identification of biomarker and the design and development of new vaccines. Thus, systems vaccinology approaches can provide translational solutions for novel and enhanced vaccine development.