Rotavirus is one of the leading causes of severe diarrhea in children worldwide. Thankfully there are vaccines available to limit disease caused by this virus, but exactly how these protect infants is unclear. At present the best-established predictor of whether an infant is protected from disease, the ‘correlate of protection’ or CoP, is serum IgA. However, this CoP is not perfect at the individual level, and the complexity of the protective immune response still needs to be unraveled.

Our lab is working to identify how rotavirus-specific antibodies are responsible for neutralizing virus both inside and outside of cells, and how this relates to disease in infants. Better understanding of correlates of protection will help guide development of the next generation of rotavirus vaccines