Malaria is still a global health issue that afects more than half of the worlds population. While a number of malaria vaccines are currently under development. The most potent and long-lived vaccine have been whole sporozoite vaccines that use live-attenuated sporozoites to generate both antibodies and liver resident memory T cells capable of blocking infection. This vaccine has a higher efficacy in a malaria naïve population (up to 100%), but this efficacy drops in a malaria endemic population (0-30%). It has been hypothesized that the immune profile of people living in malaria endemic regions is altered in a way that negatively affects vaccine induced immunity, but a better understanding of how this occurs is required to generate optimal vaccine strategies. Yet to understand how the parasite alters the immune system, thus causing vaccine hyporesponsive in endemic regions, requires detailed information on previous parasite exposure and access to tissue resident cells that reside in the liver and other lymphoid organs—both limiting our ability to study this phenomenon in humans. To overcome this, we used a non-human primate model of malaria that enables us to access tissues before and after infection and vaccination via minimally invasive biopsies. Here, we present ongoing analysis that shows the longitudinal changes in the immune landscape after infection, vaccination and infection after vaccination using flow cytometry and single cell transcriptomics.
Using Non-Human Primate to Investigate the Generation of Liver Immunity in Malaria
Category
Late Breaking Abstracts
Description
Custom CSS
double-click to edit, do not edit in source
Date: May 4 Presentation Time: 03:15 PM to 04:30 PM Room: Exhibit Hall F1