The broad aim of the Vaccine Immunogenomics Group is to understand and characterise the human immune response to vaccination and viral infection. We currently have a particular focus on understanding the mechanism of immune induction in human lymph nodes, using a technique known as ultrasound guided fine needle biopsy (FNB), also referred to as fine needle aspiration (FNA), to sample human axillary lymph nodes following vaccination. This has allowed safe, longitudinal monitoring of vaccine responses within these critical secondary lymphoid organs, which are the primary site of the generation and regulation of the adaptive immune response to vaccination or viral infection. Our investigations involve the use of advanced cellular and molecular techniques, as well as bioinformatic analysis of data, to capture the phenotypic and translational states of lymph node immune cell populations.
