I have text (bottom, using tabs to look through the different types) and I have a pre-recorded lecture (17 min but you can speed me up). Please choose whichever method works better for your learning.
There are many ways to make a vaccine
We use many strategies to induce a "primary response" of the immune system in order to train the immune system to recognize antigens from a pathogen. Creating cellular & humoral memory is what underlies "immunity" to a pathogen.
The key part of designing a vaccine is to expose the body to antigen that won't cause disease, but will provoke an immune response that can block or kill the pathogen if a person becomes infected with the real pathogen later. After a vaccine shot, some people will feel soreness or heat around the injection site. Others might even develop a slight fever and headache in the next day or so. These are all very normal reactions that indicate the vaccine is stimulating an immune response! This is not to be confused with getting sick or developing disease. Remember that it's the immune response that generates inflammation and fever symptoms and signs in people.
The material I show here illustrates the idea using a virus but please keep in mind that the same guidelines apply to bacteria and eukaryotic pathogens as well.
Review: The Immune Response to Viral Pathogens
The figure below does a pretty great job of summarizing the basic steps that the immune system takes to generate an immune response and immunological memory to an invading viral pathogen. The rest of this mini-lecture will focus on how the virus enters or is processed to be presented on the antigen presenting cell (APC). After that, activation of the helper T cell (CD4), cytotoxic T cell (CD8) and B cells happen as we've discussed in lecture (or as summarized, in MUCH less detail on this figure).
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