The objective of this study is to: 1) Characterize the immune responsiveness to administration of non-live vaccines in three cohorts of healthy adult subjects through the analysis of blood leukocytes transcriptional profiles. 2) Validate whole blood transcriptional profiles generated from standard 3mL blood draws versus 200uL blood draws obtained by finger stick. 3) Discover potential biomarkers for immune-responsiveness to non-live vaccines.

A total of 621 blood samples were collected either by venipuncture (387) or finger prick (234) from four groups of healthy adults receiving either, 2009/10 seasonal influenza or 23-valent pneumococcal vaccine or placebo (saline) injections. Subjects were recruited in 3 cohorts with 4-7 individuals per group; cohort 3 was recruited for validation of the systemic day 1 immune signature in response to seasonal influenza and pneumococcal vaccination. From each subject, peripheral blood was drawn into Tempus tubes (Applied Biosystems) or obtained by finger prick into micro capillaries and then transferred into tempus reagent to lyse blood cells and stabilize RNA before storing at -80ºC until mRNA extraction. The training set for transcriptional profiling of blood obtained by venipuncture was performed in cohort 1 which included 6 healthy adult individuals receiving seasonal influenza vaccine, 6 healthy adult individuals receiving pneumococcal vaccine, and 6 healthy adult individuals receiving placebo (saline injections). The test set for transcriptional profiling of blood obtained by venipuncture was performed in cohort 2 which included 6 healthy adult individuals receiving seasonal influenza vaccine, 6 healthy adult individuals receiving pneumococcal vaccine, and 6 healthy adult individuals receiving placebo (saline injections). The validation set for confirming systemic day 1 transcriptome immune signature in response to seasonal influenza and pneumococcal vaccination was performed in cohort 3 which included 6 healthy adult individuals receiving seasonal influenza vaccine and 4 healthy adult individuals receiving pneumococcal vaccine. The training set for transcriptional profiling of blood obtained by finger prick was performed in cohort 2 and the test set in cohort 1.