How does vaccination protect us?

Last week, I shared about how our innate immune response protect us (post before this), resulting in a potential arm sore after vaccination. However, our innate immunity is not specific and do not retain memory of these ‘intruders’, what gives us long term protection is our adaptive immunity!⁣
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Vaccination introduces us a part of virus (e.g. the spike proteins) to mimic the presence of the virus (SARS-CoV-2) without giving us the disease (COVID-19). It allows the generation of adaptive immunity against these ‘intruders’. This takes days to generate when we were first exposed to the ‘intruders’! The adaptive immunity relies on both the T cells and B cells to carry out its tasks. These cells & antibodies are produced specific to recognize & attack these ‘intruders’. So when the actual virus enters our body, our immune system will be able to respond quickly (within hours) to prevent it from causing disease! Again, this mechanism is not limited to any vaccines – e.g. Hep B, chicken pox vaccines, etc. 😁⁣

Here are some readings if you’re interested in learning more!

The New York Times “How Moderna’s Vaccine Works” 7 May 2021

Khan Academy “Adaptive immunity”

Fundamentals of vaccine immunology. Journal of global infectious diseases, 3(1), 73–78.

Molecular Biology of the Cell. 4th edition. New York: Garland Science; 2002. Chapter 24, The Adaptive Immune System. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK21070/

Immunobiology: The Immune System in Health and Disease. 5th edition. New York: Garland Science; 2001. Immunological memory. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK27158/