Systems vaccinology: a promise for the young and the poor

As a child, the risk of suffering and dying from infection is higher the younger you are; and higher, the less developed a region you are born in. Childhood vaccination programmes have greatly reduced mortality around the world, but least so for the very young among the very poor of the world. This appears partly owing to suboptimal vaccine effectiveness. Unfortunately, although most vaccines are administered to the newborn and very young infant (less than or equal to two months), we know the least about their host response to vaccination. We thus currently lack the knowledge to guide efforts aimed at improving vaccine effectiveness in this vulnerable population. Systems vaccinology, the study of molecular networks activated by immunization, has begun to provide unprecedented insights into mechanisms leading to vaccine-induced protection from infection or disease. However, all published reports of systems vaccinology have focused on either adults or at most children and older infants, not those most in need, i.e. newborns and very young infants. Given that the tools of systems vaccinology work perfectly well with very small sample volumes, it is time we deliver the promise that systems vaccinology holds for those most in need of vaccine-mediated protection from infection.