Researchers are developing a mathematical model to better recognize the immunological response to vaccinations

Nov, 2021 - By SMI

A theory by a team of researchers from the Marchuk Institute of Numerical Mathematics in Russia and UPF, Spain can help with this problem. This might assist to enhance vaccine design and reduce the technological problems that come with it.

Viruses are intracellular parasitic organisms that require host cells to replicate. In order for a virus to infect a human, it must get access to body cells that allow viruses to grow. Within the infected cells, progeny viruses will be created and released, infecting more target cells in the area. The virus will keep spreading if there is no immune response to stop it and may lead to organ failure. Vaccinations are the most cost-effective technique to supply a host with viral-specific immunity, which will subsequently assist it in keeping an infectious virus at a safe level. Vaccines may achieve this by inducing antibodies that help destroy assembled free viruses as well as virus-specific cytotoxic T cells that target infected cells, reducing the number of virus-producing cells.

Although both components of the immune response are critical for vaccination effectiveness, the question is how well they work together. Are their acts merely additive or do they go beyond that? The team has investigated the role of antibodies and cytotoxic T cells in virus infection dynamics using a model which is based on virus infection dynamics. They revealed that these two key viral infection control elements work together in a multiplicative rather than additive manner. While this association may appear vague at first glance, it has significant implications for vaccine development. A virus vaccination, for instance, would boost the basic immune response by a factor of 10,000 to be effective. This may be accomplished in two ways. Either antibodies or cytotoxic T cells are multiplied by 10,000, or each of these responses is multiplied by just 100. In terms of convenience, the latter could be easier to get, providing vaccine researchers with more design alternatives.

The first evidence in this approach is developing, despite the fact that these concerns are founded only on theoretical considerations and require experimental analysis.