Immunology Vaccines

Active Immunity

Acquired through natural infection or vaccination where the immune system plays an active role through antigen specific T- and B-cell activation and the formation of protective memory cells.

Passive Immunity

Acquired naturally via maternal IgG crossing the placenta or IgA in breast milk

Vaccines

Products generally containing either parts of microbes or whole microbes that have been killed or weakened so that they do not cause disease.

Immunisation

The process of eliciting a state of protective immunity against a disease causing pathogen.

Innate Immune System

A non-antigen specific system providing a general immediate response with no immunological memory.

Adaptive Immune System

An antigen specific response system with a lag time after exposure that develops immunological memory through T and B cells.

Immunological Memory

The ability of the immune system to respond with greater vigour and magnitude upon re-encounter with the same pathogen.

Principle of Vaccination

To mimic an infection in such a way as to activate the host immune response and induce a long lasting immunological memory.

Primary Goal of Vaccination

To offer long term protection by inducing a memory response.

Affinity Maturation

A process occurring within germinal centres through somatic hypermutation and selection by T follicular helper (TFH) cells to generate affinity matured memory B-cells.

Antiserum

An injection with preformed antibodies that can provide an antidote against poisonous venom or pathogens.

Memory T-cells

Cells that are more easily activated than naïve cells and are responsible for secondary responses

Memory B-cells

Long-lived cells that show a rapid and robust response to antigen re-exposure

Zmapp

A drug composed of three humanised monoclonal antibodies harvested from mice exposed to Ebola virus proteins.

Louis Pasteur

Scientist who developed the first attenuated vaccine (for chicken cholera) in the 1880s and coined the term vaccine from the Latin word for cow.

Edward Jenner

Scientist who in the 1790s observed that milkmaids with cowpox were immune to smallpox and performed the first successful smallpox inoculation on an 8-year-old boy.