Human Vaccines Project launches a study aimed at understanding the workings of the immune system.

With the goal of decoding the secrets of the immune system, a new study launched by the non-profit Human Vaccines Project is aimed at answering a simple question: Why are some groups of patients protected from disease after vaccination while others are not?

The study is first in a series of trials by the group to advance the science and knowledge of how the immune system works and how it might, said Human Vaccine Project, be “engineered” to do a better job providing people around the world with life-long protection from infectious disease. Intended to be the “most comprehensive” analysis of how people are affected by vaccinations, the research is focused on understanding why some people are protected and some aren’t, after an initial single dose.

Designed to assess 10 healthy adult’s (age 40 to 80) immune system response to a hepatitis B vaccine, the trials aspire to determine, says Koff, “the core principles of how the human immune system recognizes pathogens and fights diseases,” which he says will enable a more precise approach to developing vaccines and immunotherapies to fight diseases like AIDS, cancer, diabetes, MS and tuberculosis. Human Vaccine Project says the study will soon encompass several hundred people, including babies as the program expands and subsequent trials are conducted.

"Developing a better understanding of why some groups of people are protected from disease is a goal that simply must be achieved," said study investigator Tobias Kollmann, a professor of pediatrics at the University of British and vaccine research expert. "The licensed hepatitis B vaccine, which only works in about 30 percent of people on the first shot, is an ideal model vaccine to study general principles of human immunological protection because it is one of the few vaccines for which we know how it protects."

Human Vaccine Project will conduct the study at its Vaccine Evaluation Center in Vancouver, augmenting the study with extensive immunological and bioinformatic analyses via the group’s San Diego Mesa Consortium.