ArticleEvolution letters2021
Mosaic vaccination: How distributing different vaccines across a population could improve epidemic control.
Article in Evolution letters, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 12 citations in OpenAlex.
- Immune responses underpinning acute co-infections with unrelated viruses: timing and location matter.International immunology · 2025Review
- The speed of vaccination rollout and the risk of pathogen adaptation.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2025Article
- Developing T Cell Epitope-Based Vaccines Against Infection: Challenging but Worthwhile.Vaccines · 2025Review
- Evolution and spread of multiadapted pathogens in a spatially heterogeneous environment.Evolution letters · 2024Article
- Building pyramids against the evolutionary emergence of pathogens.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Article
- Vaccination strategies when vaccines are scarce: on conflicts between reducing the burden and avoiding the evolution of escape mutants.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2022Article
- Genetic diversity and disease: The past, present, and future of an old idea.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Although vaccination has been remarkably effective against some pathogens, for others, rapid antigenic evolution results in vaccination conferring only weak and/or short-lived protection. Consequently, considerable effort has been invested in developing more evolutionarily robust vaccines, either by targeting highly conserved components of the pathogen (universal vaccines) or by including multiple immunological targets within a single vaccine (multi-epitope vaccines). An unexplored third possibility is to vaccinate individuals with one of a number of qualitatively different vaccines, creating a "mosaic" of individual immunity in the population. Here we explore whether a mosaic vaccination strategy can deliver superior epidemiological outcomes to "conventional" vaccination, in which all individuals receive the same vaccine. We suppose vaccine doses can be distributed between distinct vaccine "targets" (e.g., different surface proteins against which an immune response can be generated) and/or immunologically distinct variants at these targets (e.g., strains); the pathogen can undergo antigenic evolution at both targets. Using simple mathematical models, here we provide a proof-of-concept that mosaic vaccination often outperforms conventional vaccination, leading to fewer infected individuals, improved vaccine efficacy, and lower individual risks over the course of the epidemic.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.