New developments and concepts related to biomarker application to vaccines

This minireview will provide a perspective on new developments and concepts related to biomarker applications for vaccines. In the context of preventive vaccines, biomarkers have the potential to predict adverse events in select subjects due to differences in genetic make-up/underlying medical conditions or to predict effectiveness (good versus poor response). When expanding them to therapeutic vaccines, their utility in identification of patients most likely to respond favourably (or avoid potentially negative effects of treatment) becomes self-explanatory. Despite the progress made so far on dissection of various pathways of biological significance in humans, there is still plenty to unravel about the mysteries related to the quantitative and qualitative aspects of the human host response. This review will provide a focused overview of new concepts and developments in the field of vaccine biomarkers including (i) vaccine-dependent signatures predicting subject response and safety, (ii) predicting therapeutic vaccine efficacy in chronic diseases, (iii) exploring the genetic make-up of the host that may modulate subject-specific adverse events or affect the quality of immune responses, and (iv) the topic of volunteer stratification as a result of biomarker screening (e.g. for therapeutic vaccines but also potentially for preventive vaccines) or as a reflection of an effort to compare select groups (e.g. vaccinated subjects versus patients recovering from infection) to enable the discovery of clinically relevant biomarkers for preventive vaccines.