Vaccine Immunology

Question 1

What are the 4 types of vaccines?

Answer 1

Live attenuated
Inactivated / whole
Inactive / split
Subunit

Question 2

List the live attenuated vaccines.

Answer 2

MMR 
Polio
Influenza
Smallpox
Rotavirus
Yellow fever
Varicella Zoster
Adenovirus

Question 3

List the inactivated / whole vaccines.

Answer 3

Polio
Influenza
Hepatitis A
Japanese encephalitis 
Rabies

Question 4

List the inactivated / split vaccines.

Answer 4

Influenza

Question 5

List the subunit vaccines.

Answer 5

Hepatitis A 
Hepatitis B
Influenza 
HPV
Varicella zoster

Question 6

Which vaccines give the longest immunity.

Answer 6

Live attenuated vaccines

Question 7

How is virus attenuation achieved?

Answer 7

The virus is replicated in non-natural hosts and continue to harvest the virus. The virus strain selected will then have less of an ability to cause disease in humans and this is called cell culture adaptation.

Question 8

Why do live attenuated vaccines have to be kept at a specific temperature?

Answer 8

The virus wouldn’t like the environment outside of the host and the vaccine will be inactivated.

Question 9

Give 2 examples of chemicals that can inactivate a virus in whole inactivation.

Answer 9

Formaldehyde and beta-propiolactone

Question 10

Where is the virus grown in inactivated vaccines?

Answer 10

Cell culture or eggs

Question 11

How does a subunit vaccine work?

Answer 11

The genome of the virus and recombinant DNA technology reproduces individual antigens to the virus.

Question 12

What does an adjuvant do and when do you need one?

Answer 12

An adjuvant will boost the immune response to antigens in a subunit vaccine

Question 13

List the 3 licensed adjuvants

Answer 13

Aluminium hydroxide
Aluminium phosphate
MP-54

Question 14

What do APC do?

Antigen Presenting Cells

Answer 14

Present antigen to B and T cells in correct conformation

Question 15

What cells of the innate immune system take up the vaccine?

Answer 15

Dendritic cells and macrophages

Question 16

Where will the immature dendritic cells migrate to and what will the interact with?

Answer 16

Local draining lymph nodes and they will interact with T cells and V cells to set up the adaptive immune response.

Question 17

What do CD4 cells secrete?

Answer 17

A bunch of cytokines which will stimulate the proliferation of these cells.

Question 18

What is the secondary response to an antigen called?

Answer 18

Anamnestic response (booster response)

Question 19

What are epitopes?

Answer 19

The antigenic terms that are on the proteins of the virus and will be recognised by the antibodies. These can be peptides, polysaccharides and sometimes lipids on B cells and peptides on T-cells.

Question 20

What are the two types of epitopes?

Answer 20

Dominant and subdominant epitopes

Question 21

What are the two types of B cell epitopes?

Answer 21

Linear peptides - antibodies recognise the primary structure
Conformational peptides - antibody recognisiton dependant of tertiary folding protein

Question 22

What epitopes are presented by MHC class II ?

Answer 22

T helper (Th1 and Th2) cells on dendritic cells 
(Linear peptides)

Question 23

What epitopes are presented by MHC class I?

Answer 23

Cytotoxic T (Tc) cells on dendritic cells 
(Linear peptides)

Question 24

What vaccine shouldn’t patients with eczema get?

Answer 24

Smallpox

Question 25

List the phases of vaccine formation.

Answer 25

Pre-clinical - vaccine construction and formulation
Phase I clinical - first in humans (small number)
Phase II clinical ( more volunteers) - different doses
Phase III clinical - very large numbers
Registration and deployment if phase III is successful
Phase IV - post-marketing