Moving from empirical to rational vaccine design in the ‘Omics’ era

An ideal vaccine provides long lasting protection against a pathogen by eliciting a well-rounded immune response which engages both innate and adaptive immunity. However, we have a limited understanding of how components of innate immunity, antibody and cell-mediated adaptive immunity interact and function together at a systems level. With advances in high-throughput ‘Omics’ methodologies it has become possible to capture global changes in the host, at a cellular and molecular level, that are induced by vaccination and infection. Analysis of these datasets has shown the promise of discovering mechanisms behind vaccine mediated protection, immunological memory, adverse effects as well as development of more efficient antigens and adjuvants. In this review, we will discuss how systems vaccinology takes advantage of new technology platforms and big data analysis, to enable the rational development of better vaccines.