Ontology representation and analysis of vaccine formulation and administration and their effects on vaccine immune responses

Abstract

Background: A vaccine is a processed material that if administered, is able to stimulate an adaptive immune response to prevent or ameliorate a disease. A vaccination process may protect the host against subsequent exposure to an infectious agent and result in reduced disease or total prevention of the disease. Vaccine formulation and administration methods may affect vaccine safety and efficacy significantly.

Results: In this report, the detailed classification and definitions of vaccine components and vaccine administration processes are represented using OWL within the framework of the Vaccine Ontology (VO). Different use cases demonstrate how different vaccine formulations and routes of vaccine administration affect the protection efficacy, general immune responses, and adverse events following vaccination. For example, vaccinations of mice with Brucella abortus vaccine strain RB51 using intraperitoneal or intranasal administration resulted in different protection levels. As shown in the vaccine adverse event data provided by US FDA, live attenuated and nonliving vaccines are usually administered in different routes and have different local and systematic adverse effect manifestations.

Conclusions: Vaccine formulation and administration route can independently or collaboratively affect host response outcomes (positive protective immunity or adverse events) after vaccination. Ontological representation of different vaccine and vaccination factors in these two areas allows better understanding and analysis of the causal effects between different factors and immune responses.

Figure 1

Selected core VO terms relevant to the presented research. This figure shows a list of VO core terms relevant to the targeted study. VO is developed under the BFO framework. The VO term ‘vaccine component’ is a BFO ‘material entity’. A ‘vaccine’ is an OBI ‘processed material entity’. A ‘route of administration’ is a subclass of ‘BFO: site’. ‘vaccine-induced host response’, ‘vaccine-induced adaptive immune response’, ‘immunization’, ‘vaccine immunization’ and ‘vaccination’ are all processes, i.e., ‘processual entity’ in BFO. Note that ‘vaccination’ is asserted as ‘administering substance in vivo’ from OBI. Vaccination is the process of administering a vaccine into a host. It differs from vaccine immunization that is a biological process that starts at vaccination and results in an outcome of the host getting immunized.

Figure 2

Vaccine component represented in VO.

Figure 3

VO classification of (A) vaccination (B) route of administration.

Figure 4

Modelling the RB51-induced different immune response with different route administration. The upper part of this figure models the experimental results that interperitoneal RB51 vaccination in mice induced protection against virulent strain S2308 challenge in the lung [25]. The lower part of this figure models another study which showed that intranasal RB51 vaccination was unable to protect against virulent strain 2308 challenge in the lung as investigated in experiment 2 [26]. Filled square boxes indicate class level terms. Boxes with round corners represent individual level data collected from papers.