Peter Medawar Building for Pathogen Research, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.
Department of Statistics, Technical University of Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany.
Front Immunol. 2024 Feb 28;15:1329805. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2024.1329805. eCollection 2024.
mRNA vaccine technologies introduced following the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic have highlighted the need to better understand the interaction of adjuvants and the early innate immune response. Type I interferon (IFN-I) is an integral part of this early innate response that primes several components of the adaptive immune response. Women are widely reported to respond better than men to tri- and quadrivalent influenza vaccines. Plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs) are the primary cell type responsible for IFN-I production, and female pDCs produce more IFN-I than male pDCs since the upstream pattern recognition receptor Toll-like receptor 7 (TLR7) is encoded by X chromosome and is biallelically expressed by up to 30% of female immune cells. Additionally, the TLR7 promoter contains several putative androgen response elements, and androgens have been reported to suppress pDC IFN-I . Unexpectedly, therefore, we recently observed that male adolescents mount stronger antibody responses to the Pfizer BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine than female adolescents after controlling for natural SARS-CoV-2 infection. We here examined pDC behaviour in this same cohort to determine the impact of IFN-I on anti-spike and anti-receptor-binding domain IgG titres to BNT162b2. Through flow cytometry and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) modelling, we determined that serum-free testosterone was associated with reduced pDC IFN-I, but contrary to the well-described immunosuppressive role for androgens, the most bioactive androgen dihydrotestosterone was associated with increased IgG titres to BNT162b2. Also unexpectedly, we observed that co-vaccination with live attenuated influenza vaccine boosted the magnitude of IgG responses to BNT162b2. Together, these data support a model where systemic IFN-I increases vaccine-mediated immune responses, yet for vaccines with intracellular stages, modulation of the local IFN-I response may alter antigen longevity and consequently improve vaccine-driven immunity.
mRNA 疫苗技术在 SARS-CoV-2 大流行后被引入,这突显了需要更好地了解佐剂和早期先天免疫反应的相互作用。I 型干扰素(IFN-I)是这种早期先天反应的一个组成部分,它为适应性免疫反应的几个组成部分奠定了基础。据广泛报道,女性对三价和四价流感疫苗的反应优于男性。浆细胞样树突状细胞(pDC)是负责 IFN-I 产生的主要细胞类型,由于上游模式识别受体 Toll 样受体 7(TLR7)由 X 染色体编码,多达 30%的女性免疫细胞以双等位基因表达,因此女性 pDC 产生的 IFN-I 多于男性 pDC。此外,TLR7 启动子包含几个假定的雄激素反应元件,雄激素已被报道抑制 pDC IFN-I。因此,出乎意料的是,我们最近观察到,在控制自然 SARS-CoV-2 感染后,男性青少年对辉瑞 BNT162b2 mRNA 疫苗的抗体反应强于女性青少年。在这里,我们在同一队列中检查了 pDC 的行为,以确定 IFN-I 对 BNT162b2 的抗刺突和抗受体结合域 IgG 滴度的影响。通过流式细胞术和最小绝对收缩和选择算子(LASSO)建模,我们确定无血清睾酮与减少 pDC IFN-I 相关,但与雄激素的众所周知的免疫抑制作用相反,最具生物活性的雄激素二氢睾酮与增加 BNT162b2 的 IgG 滴度相关。同样出乎意料的是,我们观察到与活减毒流感疫苗共同接种可增强对 BNT162b2 的 IgG 反应的幅度。这些数据共同支持一种模型,即全身性 IFN-I 增加疫苗介导的免疫反应,但对于具有细胞内阶段的疫苗,局部 IFN-I 反应的调节可能改变抗原的寿命,从而改善疫苗驱动的免疫。