Despite the prevalence of influenza vaccines, the flu causes about 36,000 deaths each year in the United States. Older Americans are hit the hardest; people over 65 comprise about 90 percent of the casualties.
Researcher Duygu Ucar of The Jackson Laboratory (JAX), a longtime MCG client, sees an urgent need to understand responsiveness to flu vaccines. Ucar, an associate professor at JAX and a faculty member at UConn School of Medicine Genomics and Genome Medicine, is teaming up with infectious disease and aging experts to lead a study in understanding the efficacy of new generation vaccines and their effectiveness in older adults.
Ucar has recently been awarded a five-year grant, totaling $9,046,988, by The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease to pinpoint the age-related immune alterations that reduce influenza vaccine effectiveness.
“By performing comprehensive profiling of [older adults’] blood antibodies and immune cells over time using advanced genomic and functional assays, we will be able to associate specific age-related immune alterations with vaccine responder or non-responder status,” Ucar says. “Thus allowing us to pinpoint biological pathways that can be targeted to enhance vaccine efficacy and that can also help us to progress towards precision vaccinology and eventually developing more effective influenza vaccines.”
Learn more about the study here.