The application of single-cell RNA sequencing in vaccinology

Single-cell RNA sequencing allows highly detailed profiling of cellular immune responses from limited-volume samples, advancing prospects of a new era of systems immunology. The power of single-cell RNA sequencing offers various opportunities to decipher the immune response to infectious diseases and vaccines. Here, University of Oxford researchers describe the potential uses of single-cell RNA sequencing methods in prophylactic vaccine development, concentrating on infectious diseases including COVID-19. Using examples from several diseases, they review how single-cell RNA sequencing has been used to evaluate the immunological response to different vaccine platforms and regimens. By highlighting published and unpublished single-cell RNA sequencing studies relevant to vaccinology, the researchers discuss some general considerations how the field could be enriched with the widespread adoption of this technology.

scRNA-seq technologies that have been critical to allowing increments in experiment scale. Achievements over the past three years have more or less continued this pace; for example, combinatorial fluidic preindexing has increased the throughput of droplet-based single-cell RNA sequencing up to 15-fold.