Vaccines rank among the most effective public-health interventions in the history of medicine. Vaccinology concerns their design, evaluation and deployment, as well as the understanding of the immune responses they elicit. Recent innovations — messenger-RNA vaccines, new adjuvants, vectors and delivery systems — have profoundly renewed the field, while bringing to the fore a decisive question: how does vaccination generate durable, protective immune memory?
It is precisely on this question that the work to which Inovarion has contributed focuses. The laboratory joined the study of the B-cell memory induced by messenger-RNA vaccination against SARS-CoV-2, showing how this memory recognises successive viral variants and gains in affinity over time[2]. This analysis covered both vaccinated naive individuals and previously infected people, shedding light on the complementarity between natural and vaccine-induced immunity. Other work characterised very-long-term B-cell memory against smallpox, several decades after vaccination, revealing the role of the lasting imprint of germinal centres and of the splenic niche in its maintenance[1]; telomere length and the NOTCH signalling pathway appear here as markers of the longevity of these memory cells. A third study evaluated a recombinant viral vector (rAAV2/1) administered cutaneously as an immunisation platform, able to induce resident-memory CD8 T cells in the skin[3].
This research relies on single-cell sequencing, antibody-repertoire analysis, viral neutralisation assays and biolayer interferometry, as well as intradermal immunisation. This work has appeared in leading journals — Immunity, Journal of Virology and Cell.
Inovarion’s contribution to vaccinology thus lies in the detailed characterisation of vaccine-induced immune responses — the durability, quality and breadth of the memory generated — rather than in the formulation of the vaccines themselves. This is a complementary and decisive expertise: understanding why some responses persist for decades while others fade is essential to designing booster strategies. It is precisely this command of immune analysis that makes it possible to measure and understand the protection conferred by vaccination.
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Representative publications
- Chappert et al. Human anti-smallpox long-lived memory B cells are defined by dynamic interactions in the splenic niche and long-lasting germinal center imprinting. Immunity, 2022. Record → · PubMed
- Sokal et al. mRNA vaccination of naive and COVID-19-recovered individuals elicits potent memory B cells that recognize SARS-CoV-2 variants. Immunity, 2021. Record → · PubMed
- Gross et al. Cross-Presentation of Skin-Targeted Recombinant Adeno-associated Virus 2/1 Transgene Induces Potent Resident Memory CD8(+) T Cell Responses. J Virol, 2019. Record → · PubMed