The Human Immunomics Initiative (HII), a joint project between the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Human Vaccines Project (HVP), focuses on studying immunity and the predictability of immuneresponsiveness to vaccines in aging populations. This paper describes the hypotheses and methodological approaches of this new collaborative initiative. Central to our thinking is the idea that predictors of age-related non-communicable diseases are the same as predictors for infectious diseases like COVID-19 and influenza. Fundamental to our approach is to differentiate between chronological, biological and immune age, and to use existing large-scale population cohorts. The latter provide well-typed phenotypic data on individuals’ health status over time, readouts of routine clinical biochemical biomarkers to determine biological age, and bio-banked plasma samples to deep phenotype humoral immune responses as biomarkers of immune age. The first phase of the program involves 1. the exploration of biological age, humoral biomarkers of immune age, and genetics in a large multigenerational cohort, and 2. the subsequent development of models of immunity in relation to health status in a second, prospective cohort of an aging population. In the second phase, vaccine responses and efficacy of licensed COVID-19 vaccines in the presence and absence of influenza-, pneumococcal- and pertussis vaccines routinely offered to elderly, will be studied in older aged participants of prospective population-based cohorts in different geographical locations who will be selected for representing distinct biological and immune ages. The HII research program is aimed at relating vaccine responsiveness to biological and immune age, and identifying aging-related pathways crucial to enhance vaccine effectiveness in aging populations.

人类免疫组学计划 (HII) 是哈佛 TH Chan 公共卫生学院和人类疫苗项目 (HVP) 之间的一个联合项目，专注于研究老年人群的免疫力和对疫苗的免疫反应性的可预测性。本文描述了这一新的合作倡议的假设和方法论。我们的核心思想是，与年龄相关的非传染性疾病的预测因子与 COVID-19 和流感等传染病的预测因子相同。我们方法的基础是区分实足年龄、生物学年龄和免疫年龄，并使用现有的大规模人群群组。后者提供关于个体健康状况随时间推移的良好类型表型数据、常规临床生化生物标志物的读数以确定生物学年龄，和生物库血浆样本以作为免疫年龄的生物标志物的深层表型体液免疫反应。该计划的第一阶段涉及 1. 在一个大型多代队列中探索生物年龄、免疫年龄的体液生物标志物和遗传学，以及 2. 在第二个前瞻性队列中开发与健康状况相关的免疫模型人口老龄化。在第二阶段，将在不同地理区域的前瞻性人群队列的老年参与者中研究许可 COVID-19 疫苗在存在和不存在常规向老年人提供的流感、肺炎球菌和百日咳疫苗的情况下的疫苗反应和功效将选择代表不同生物学和免疫年龄的地点。