Genetics and Vaccinology

Abstract

Vaccines are the most effective and sustainable means of preventing infectious diseases. Novel diagnostics would help customize the use of vaccines in subpopulations in which they would display enhanced safety and efficacy. This chapter focuses on giving a glimpse of the genetic status effect of vaccine immune response and how this could contribute to the development of novel vaccine candidates that are better directed and predicted relative to the genetic history of an individual and/or population. It provides a summary of genetic factors associated with human leukocyte antigen (HLA) alleles and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in multiple classes of genes that provide immune response to vaccines. The immune response network theory, in its simplest form, is based on the premise "the response to a vaccine is the cumulative result of interactions driven by a host of genes and their interactions, and is theoretically predictable".