# Accelerating Vaccine Adjuvant Screening: Early Follicular Dendritic Cell and Germinal Center B Cell Biomarkers Predict Protective Efficacy

## TL;DR

This study finds that early cell responses in mice can predict vaccine effectiveness, speeding up adjuvant screening for vaccines.

## Contribution

The study introduces early follicular dendritic cells and germinal center B cells as predictive biomarkers for vaccine adjuvant efficacy.

## Key findings

- Germinal center B cell responses on days 7 and 9 correlate with vaccine protection.
- Follicular dendritic cell abundance on day 7 predicts protection across all adjuvants.
- This method reduces vaccine screening time from weeks to a single week.

## Abstract

Background: The current assessment method of the protective efficacy of adjuvanted vaccines remains slow and labor-intensive, hindered by prolonged immunization protocols and complex assays. Methods: To overcome this bottleneck, we demonstrate that early segregated cellular biomarkers enable rapid prediction of protection, using a respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) pre-fusion F (pre-F) protein model with diverse adjuvants in mice. Results: We identified that germinal center (GC) B cell responses (Days 7 and 9 post-immunization) strongly aligned with protective efficacy, except for Alum, which achieved MF59-level protection despite lower GC responses. Crucially, follicular dendritic cell (FDC) abundance at day 7 universally predicted protection across all adjuvants, including Alum, drastically shortening discovery time and effort from at least 4–6 weeks to within 1 week. Conclusions: FDCs and GC B cells serve as complementary early biomarkers that accurately forecast vaccine efficacy. This approach could potentially reduce the need for prolonged immunization regimens by cellular profiling on days 7–9, offering a modest step toward streamlining adjuvant selection and informing vaccine design.