A model for establishment, maintenance and reactivation of the immune response after vaccination against Ebola virus.

The 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa has triggered accelerated development of several preventive vaccines against Ebola virus. Under the EBOVAC1 consortium, three phase I studies were carried out to assess safety and immunogenicity of a two-dose heterologous vaccination regimen developed by Janssen Vaccines and Prevention in collaboration with Bavarian Nordic. To describe the immune response induced by the two-dose heterologous vaccine regimen, we propose a mechanistic ODE based model, which takes into account the role of immunological memory.

Dynamics of the Humoral Immune Response to a Prime-Boost Ebola Vaccine: Quantification and Sources of Variation.

The Ebola vaccine based on Ad26.ZEBOV/MVA-BN-Filo prime-boost regimens is being evaluated in multiple clinical trials. The long-term immune response to the vaccine is unknown, including factors associated with the response and variability around the response.

Multi-type Galton-Watson Processes with Affinity-Dependent Selection Applied to Antibody Affinity Maturation.

We analyze the interactions between division, mutation and selection in a simplified evolutionary model, assuming that the population observed can be classified into fitness levels. The construction of our mathematical framework is motivated by the modeling of antibody affinity maturation of B-cells in germinal centers during an immune response. This is a key process in adaptive immunity leading to the production of high-affinity antibodies against a presented antigen.

Random walks on binary strings applied to the somatic hypermutation of B-cells.

Within the germinal center in follicles, B-cells proliferate, mutate and differentiate, while being submitted to a powerful selection: a micro-evolutionary mechanism at the heart of adaptive immunity. A new foreign pathogen is confronted to our immune system, the mutation mechanism that allows B-cells to adapt to it is called somatic hypermutation: a programmed process of mutation affecting B-cell receptors at extremely high rate. By considering random walks on graphs, we introduce and analyze a simplified mathematical model in order to understand this extremely efficient learning process.