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

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

Additionally, despite the high costs of high throughput analysis and limited numbers of human samples, to minimize confounding factors, it is best to maximize sample sizes to achieve appropriate statistical power. Besides sample size, another major confounding variable from a systems vaccinology approach is that the observed transcriptomic changes may result from new induction of gene expression or may simply reflect the changing cellular composition of PBMC compartments. Given that it is impossible to obtain cellular or tissue samples from lymph nodes or spleens of healthy human subjects post vaccination, vaccine efficacy tests must be performed on PBMCs drawn pre-and post-vaccination. This limits the optimal understanding of vaccine-induced protective immune responses. One should keep in mind that PBMCs include mixed and dynamic cell populations, and thus, there may be dynamic events occurring within lymphoid compartments of PBMCs. 87, 88 Therefore, it will be more informative and precise to determine the transcriptome in sorted cell subsets, such as B cells, T cells, natural killer cells, macrophages, and dendritic cells.