The person is Christa Lesté-Lasserre.
An illustration of a cell.
There is a science library.
The way certain immune cells are selected for long-term storage may affect the effectiveness of vaccines.
B cells, a type of immune cell, are stimulated by a vaccine to produce an immune response. A quick and strong immune response is created by most vaccines. A few B cells are stored in the bone marrow as long-lived plasma cells, which give enduring immunity.
Experiments in mice show that a longer immune response could allow the most effective B cells to be recruited.
Researchers assumed that the body recruited all of its cells from a pool of B cells several weeks after the vaccine because the immune cells get better at producing antibodies.
Many laboratories create vaccines that induce a short, sharp immune response. This is based on an idea that has not been proven.
Tarlinton and his colleagues killed the laboratory mice a few weeks later to study the bone marrow in their legs, to see if it was related to the vaccine. The mice were genetically modified in a way that made them show a time stamp when B cells were used.
The researchers were surprised that recruitment didn't just happen at the end of the immune response. A new blood cell was created almost every hour after a vaccine. The longer the immune response went on, the more cells went to the bone marrow.
Tarlinton suggests that the longer you can prolong the immune response, the more cells you will accumulate and the better ones will be at the end.
We used to think the immune system only had memory. Understanding our immune defences could change the way we fight disease.
If vaccines are designed to cause months-long immune responses, they could be more effective. Changing the way the vaccine is delivered into the body could be involved.
The inflammation and side effects would be the same for the recipient as for the vaccine.
He says that it's not certain whether the same method of recruitment works in response to natural infections or not.
The journal is called Science Immunology.
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