Pregnancy has a minimal impact on the acute transcriptional signature to vaccination

John S Tregoning; January Weiner; Deniz Cizmeci; Danielle Hake; Jeroen Maertzdorf; Stefan H E Kaufmann; Geert Leroux-Roels; Cathy Maes; Annelies Aerssens; Anna Calvert; Christine E Jones

doi:10.1038/s41541-020-0177-6

Pregnancy has a minimal impact on the acute transcriptional signature to vaccination

NPJ Vaccines. 2020 Mar 25:5:29. doi: 10.1038/s41541-020-0177-6. eCollection 2020.

Authors

John S Tregoning^#¹, January Weiner^{2

3}, Deniz Cizmeci¹, Danielle Hake⁴, Jeroen Maertzdorf², Stefan H E Kaufmann², Geert Leroux-Roels⁵, Cathy Maes⁵, Annelies Aerssens⁵, Anna Calvert⁴, Christine E Jones^#^{4

6}

Affiliations

¹ 1Department of Infectious Disease, Imperial College London, St Mary's Campus, London, W2 1PG UK.
² 2Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, Berlin, Germany.
³ 6Present Address: Core Unit Bioinformatics, Berlin Institute of Health, Berlin, Germany.
⁴ 3Vaccine Institute, St George's, University of London, London, UK.
⁵ 4Centre for Vaccinology, Ghent University and Ghent University Hospital, Ghent, Belgium.
⁶ 5Faculty of Medicine and Institute for Life Sciences, University of Southampton and University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, Southampton, UK.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Vaccination in pregnancy is an effective tool to protect both the mother and infant; vaccines against influenza, pertussis and tetanus are currently recommended. A number of vaccines with a specific indication for use in pregnancy are in development, with the specific aim of providing passive humoral immunity to the newborn child against pathogens responsible for morbidity and mortality in young infants. However, the current understanding about the immune response to vaccination in pregnancy is incomplete. We analysed the effect of pregnancy on early transcriptional responses to vaccination. This type of systems vaccinology approach identifies genes and pathways that are altered in response to vaccination and can be used to understand both the acute inflammation in response to the vaccine and to predict immunogenicity. Pregnant women and mice were immunised with Boostrix-IPV, a multivalent vaccine, which contains three pertussis antigens. Blood was collected from women before and after vaccination and RNA extracted for analysis by microarray. While there were baseline differences between pregnant and non-pregnant women, vaccination induced characteristic patterns of gene expression, with upregulation in interferon response and innate immunity gene modules, independent of pregnancy. We saw similar patterns of responses in both women and mice, supporting the use of mice for preclinical screening of novel maternal vaccines. Using a systems vaccinology approach in pregnancy demonstrated that pregnancy does not affect the initial response to vaccination and that studies in non-pregnant women can provide information about vaccine immunogenicity and potentially safety.

Keywords: Immunology; Vaccines.