2026-10-10T08:11:51Z https://api.figshare.com/v2/oai

oai:figshare.com:article/33920617 2026-09-18T05:39:51Z category_696 portal_316 item_type_3 month_year_09_2026

Data Sheet 1_Exogenous IFN-α delivered as an intranasal adjunct to systemic vaccination directs vaccine-specific T-cell responses to the upper respiratory tract.pdf Rupsha Fraser (25070263) Jürgen Schwarze (84947) David H. Dockrell (7108511) Genetic Immunology interferon-alpha (IFN-α) mucosal immunity nasal immunomodulation respiratory infections systemic vaccination upper respiratory tract (URT) nasal mucosa <p>Respiratory infectious diseases remain a major global health burden, sustained by ongoing community transmission. Licensed respiratory vaccines are predominantly systemically administered, which elicit vaccine-induced antigen-specific circulating immunity, but fail to protect the primary site of initial infection and onward transmission, the upper respiratory tract (URT). The URT is a highly compartmentalised anatomical site that is not directly accessed by systemic vaccination. Consequently, conventional systemic respiratory vaccines do not reliably prevent acquisition of infection or its onward transmission, allowing continued circulation and evolutionary pressure on respiratory pathogens, whilst vulnerable populations remain disproportionately affected. To overcome this critical limitation of respiratory vaccinology, we present a novel intervention that combines systemic vaccination with targeted non-antigenic immunomodulatory stimulation of the nasal mucosa to generate vaccine antigen-specific immunity in the URT. This approach may offer an easily deployable route for use across diverse vaccination programmes to interrupt respiratory infection and transmission chains at a population scale. Here, using SARS-CoV-2 vaccination as a test case, we demonstrate for the first time that intranasal exogenous IFN-α, when coadministered as an adjunct to systemic vaccination, provides local immune instruction without reliance on intranasal antigen delivery, and directs vaccine-specific T-cell responses to the URT.</p> 2026-09-18T05:39:51Z Dataset Dataset 10.3389/fimmu.2026.1924673.s001 https://figshare.com/articles/dataset/Data_Sheet_1_Exogenous_IFN-_delivered_as_an_intranasal_adjunct_to_systemic_vaccination_directs_vaccine-specific_T-cell_responses_to_the_upper_respiratory_tract_pdf/33920617 CC BY 4.0