Introduction to humoral immune

response to infectious agents

(Nursing students 200L)

Dr. Taiwo A. Banjo

(Medical Microbiology & Parasitology, OOU)

February, 2022
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 An overview of the immune defense
mechanisms against pathogens
• The immune system is tasked to protect
the host against invading pathogens and
thereby to prevent infectious disease.
• An appropriate immune response to an
infectious agent requires reciprocal
interactions between components of the
innate and adaptive immune systems.
• The various microorganisms have developed
different strategies to invade their host and/or
evade the host immune response.
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General immune response & foreign invaders

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Innate immunity

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1. First lines of defence

2. Innate immunity

3. Adaptive immunity Humoral (B cells) and Cellular (T-cell) immunity8

Infectious agents of immune system

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Innate (non-specific) immunity

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Immune response

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Exposure to infectious agents

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Humoral versus cell-mediated immunity 1

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Humoral versus cell-mediated immunity 2

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Humoral immunity 3

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Antigen presenting cells

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Antigen presenting cells (APC) –Dendritic cells

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Activation & class-switching of B-cells

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 Humoral immune response
• The humoral immune response provides the
most comprehensive approach to combating an
infection, and generates the greatest potential for
mounting effective protective immunity

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Protective mechanism of binding
antibodies to antigens

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Humoral immunity: B cells

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• The ability to understand the relationship between the large repertoires of
antibodies generated in response to infectious disease can provide new insight
into the mechanism of the humoral immune response.
• The measurement of antibodies generated by immunization or natural
infection is often a gauge for protective efficacy, as observed by passive
administration of vaccine-induced antibodies, which can prevent disease and
transmission to susceptible contacts
• The development of antibodies against numerous epitopes on an antigen
may increase the efficacy of protection by limiting the generation of escape
mutants.
• A microarray method provides a robust approach for characterizing the
immune response and may lead to a more thorough understanding of the
biology of infectious agents and their respective host’s immune systems

• The data gathered can then be utilized for the discovery of serodiagnostic
antigens, prediction of potential antigens for vaccine targets, vaccine
efficacy profiling and used to validate and improve in silico antigen
prediction algorithms

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Primary & Secondary humoral responses

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Diagnostic relevance of humoral response
to infectious agents
• An urgent need exists to more rapidly assess the
presence, prevalence and spread of newly emerging or
re-emerging infectious diseases, as well as detecting the
intentional introduction of bio-warfare agents
• Improved rapid diagnostic methods are needed for
public health agencies to better monitor changes in the
prevalence of emerging infectious diseases
• The ability to discover diagnostic antigens becomes
prohibitively more difficult with an increased genome
size. The genomes of B. burgdorferi, Chlamydia spp,
M. tuberculosis and P. falciparum encode more

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