Research highlights role of immunological imprinting — or how the immune system fights the flu after previous exposure to the virus via infections or vaccinations — in the elicitation of new antibodies.

The conventional wisdom guiding our long-established annual flu shot comes from an understanding that once a person is newly vaccinated, the immune system is reset and all new antibodies are directed to the new flu strain.

However, new research from the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin published in a recent issue of the journal Cell Host & Microbe highlights the role played by immunological imprinting — or how the immune system fights the flu after previous exposure to the virus via infections or vaccinations — in the elicitation of new antibodies.

«After being vaccinated with a new strain of flu, our immune systems appear to be expanding and boosting antibodies generated by previous exposures to earlier flu viruses, whether by infection or vaccination,» said George Georgiou, a professor of biomedical and chemical engineering and molecular biosciences, a leader in the field of therapeutics and immune responses and co-author of the study.

The researchers examined the composition and dynamics of an individual donor’s antibody repertoire over a five-year period during which the donor had been infected or vaccinated with influenza multiple times. The study suggests our immune systems are «imprinted» by antibodies that had been elicited in response to influenza strains encountered previously in life.

«Each vaccination still elicits new antibodies that are highly specific to the new strains, but these new antibodies decay over time, returning to the antibody repertoire that already existed before the vaccination,» said Jiwon Lee, a postdoctoral fellow in Georgiou’s Laboratory of Protein Therapeutics and Applied Immunology who led the study.

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