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

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

Potential biases for systems vaccinology data analysis. The application of systems biology approaches to the fields of immunology and vaccinology faces many challenges and potential limitations. The potentially challenging factors for systems vaccinology analysis can be divided into different categories, such as cellular, population, molecular, individual, and technical aspects. Fig. 3 . Use of reverse vaccinology tools in vaccine design. The workflow of vaccine design using reverse vaccinology is shown. First, B cells or plasma cells can be isolated from infected or vaccinated individuals and PCR amplification of antibody gene heavy and light chains can lead to human B cell repertoire analysis, which enables the identification of protective antibodies. Using sequence information of antibody variable regions, the interaction of antibodies with their target antigen can be structurally characterized and used to predict the protective epitope using crystallography. The protective epitope can then be engineered to produce an optimized immunogen with enhanced delivery format, such as nanoparticle technologies or adjuvants. Finally, this new reverse vaccinology-based antigen can be tested in humans.