Interferon and inflammasome networks are associated with lower neutralizing antibody responses to Yellow Fever vaccination

The immune response to vaccines is critically dependent on multiple host and environmental factors including acute and chronic infections as well as metabolic and/or pathophysiological states of the host. In this study, we used computational systems biology to analyze a cohort of Ugandan subjects following immunization with the Yellow Fever vaccine (YF-17D) to identify pre-vaccination molecular and cellular mechanisms that are associated with the response to the vaccine. By integrating gene expression profiling, cell subset phenotyping and cytokine measurements, we highlight the upregulated levels of interferon-regulated, and inflammasome genes and proteins at the time of vaccination as negative correlates of the antibody response to the YF-17D vaccine. We show that this innate immune response is associated with higher levels of genes that interact with bacterial components and with increased frequencies of Tr1 CD39+ IL-10 producing cells. Our results provide a framework to define the influence of environmental parameters present prior to vaccination on the response to vaccines in human populations Pre-vaccination transcriptomic profiling and other immune parameters have been investigated in association with the immune response, at Day 80 post vaccination, to Yellow Fever vaccine (YF-17D) in a cohort of 36 recruited in Entebee (Uganda)