Immune signatures and systems biology of vaccines

Vaccines represent a strategic successful tool to prevent or contain diseases with high morbidity or mortality. However, despite the extensive and wide use, we still have a limited knowledge on mechanisms underlying the effective elicitation of protective immune responses by vaccines, which represents the final outcome of a effective cooperation between the innate and adaptive arms of the immunity. Immunity is made of a multifaceted set of integrated responses involving a dynamic interaction of thousands of molecules, whose list is constantly updated to fill the several empty spaces of this puzzle. The recent development of new technologies and computational tools allows to perform a comprehensive and quantitative analysis of the interactions between all of the components of immunity over time. Here we review the role of the innate immunity in the host response to vaccine antigens and the potential of systems biology in providing relevant and novel insights in the mechanisms of action of vaccines in order to improve their design and effectiveness.