The Heterogeneity of B-cell Memory and Vaccine Design

The establishment of long-term humoral memory to a pathogen is an important goal of vaccination. One of the important component of it is belong to memory B cells. This cells will help us from the future re-attack of pathogens by surveying their specific antigen in the periphery for affinity maturation. Classically the marker for B cell memory was expressed by CD27. However recent finding suggest the heterogeneity of the memory compartment that involving CD27- memory B cells. If a vaccine has been designed to non-specific memory B cell, it potentially will result in loss of maintenance and/or establishment of an important subset of memory populations. Consequently, this will lead to improper localization and ineffective response that result in loss of vaccine efficacy. Therefore it would be challenging to study the environment that create this subset memory cells and to understand their property in vivo for the better vaccine design.

Reference:
http://www.frontiersin.org/b_cell_biology/10.3389/fimmu.2011.00077/full