Regulation of B cell responses to vaccines by long-term retention of antigens in germinal centres

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Vaccines have eliminated the danger of many lethal infections and remain the best tool to combat new pathogens. However, traditional vaccines have limitations and don't protect well from rapidly changing or otherwise sophisticated pathogens. Vaccines also take time to develop and often require several doses to achieve good protection, delaying their efficacy against emerging threats. One of the possible advancements in vaccine design is to improve the entry of vaccine material into draining lymph nodes and make them persist long enough to stimulate a strong immune response. Retention of the vaccine over time is particularly important to generate protective antibodies which take several weeks to develop. We have identified a specific type of accessory immune cells that capture and keep foreign materials in lymph nodes for long periods of time (weeks) and present them to immune cells called B lymphocytes, which produce antibodies. Our main aim is to determine the properties of these accessory cells so that we can understand how the retention of foreign materials works and how it helps B lymphocytes to produce antibodies of high quality. We use the new knowledge to evaluate current vaccine properties and develop improvements to generate a stronger antibody response with a lower dosage.