Mechanisms underlying vaccination protocols that may optimally elicit broadly neutralizing antibodies against highly mutable pathogens

Mechanisms underlying vaccination protocols that may optimally elicit broadly neutralizing antibodies against highly mutable pathogens

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.07.330340v2

Keywords:

1. Prophylactic vaccines: Vaccines that prevent infections or diseases.

2. Immune system: The body's defense system against infections and diseases.

3. Antibodies: Proteins produced by the immune system to fight off infections.

4. Antigen: A substance that triggers an immune response.

5. B cells: A type of white blood cell that produces antibodies.

6. Affinity maturation (AM): A process by which B cells evolve to produce more effective antibodies.

7. Pathogens: Microorganisms that can cause diseases.

8. Broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs): Antibodies that can protect against diverse strains of a pathogen.

9. Kullback-Leibler divergence (KLD): A measure of the difference between two probability distributions.

10. Phylogenetic tree analysis: A method used to study the evolutionary relationships between different species or genes.

Summary:

The study explores a minimal model to understand how the selection forces imposed by antigens can be optimally chosen to guide the evolution of broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs) in response to highly mutable pathogens, despite the challenges posed by the finite number of vaccinations and the non-equilibrium dynamics of the affinity maturation process.