Mechanistic insight into immune amnesia and immunity induced by wild-type measles virus compared to live-attenuated measles vaccine

Abstract

Abstract Despite the availability of a safe and effective vaccine, measles still causes significant mortality and morbidity among children in developing countries. As a disease that induces immune amnesia with increased susceptibility to other infections but also life-long immunity to measles, little is known about the immunogenetics of B cells that elicit measles-specific antibodies (Abs) in natural infection vs vaccination. We therefore conducted single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) of longitudinal peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) and lymph node (LN) samples from wild-type (WT) measles virus (MeV) and live-attenuated measles vaccine (LAMV)-infected rhesus macaques (RMs) and characterized their gene expression, B cell repertoires and clonotype changes via bioinformatic pipelines. Preliminary analysis of two RMs across four timepoints (one WT MeV- and one LAMV-infected RM) revealed similarities and differences in immune cell populations and B cell repertoires, providing important mechanistic insights into B cell clonal development in natural infection as compared to vaccination. Supported by grants from NIH R01 AI153140 and the Jeffrey Richardson Fellowship