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This content will become publicly available on December 1, 2025

Title: Minimal framework for optimizing vaccination protocols targeting highly mutable pathogens
A persistent public health challenge is identifying immunization schemes that are effective against highly mutable pathogens such as HIV and influenza viruses. To address this, we analyze a simplified model of affinity maturation, the Darwinian evolutionary process B cells undergo during immunization. The vaccination protocol determines the selection forces that steer affinity maturation to generate antibodies. We focus on identifying the optimal selection forces exerted by a generic time-dependent vaccination protocol to maximize the production of broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs) that can protect against a broad spectrum of pathogen strains. The model utilizes a path integral representation and operator approximations within a mean-field limit and provides guiding principles for optimizing time-dependent vaccine-induced selection forces to enhance bnAb generation. We compare our analytical mean-field results with the outcomes of stochastic simulations, and we discuss their similarities and differences.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2218849
PAR ID:
10572152
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ;
Publisher / Repository:
American Physical Society
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Physical Review E
Volume:
110
Issue:
6
ISSN:
2470-0045
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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