Earticle

Inspired by the biological immune system against outside invasion in nature, this paper propose a network security strategy using Agent technology. The Agents with independent behavior capacity are set for resisting network intrusion using their spontaneous coordinate organization. Based on the comparisons of existing immunization strategies, such as target immune, acquaintance immune and random immunity, it is found that the importance of nodes in network are influenced by interaction between nodes, degree of nodes, information flow, and other factors. If the nodes are more important, they have a greater influence over the whole network. When important nodes are infected by virus, there will be a higher probability of spreading of hazard information. Therefore, this paper proposes a network security model using Agent technology, where important nodes are implanted with relationship immunization strategy. Experimental results show when the network suffered from random or malicious attacks, relationship immunization strategy is more effective than others existing methods.

Most influenza vaccines currently in use target the highly variable hemagglutinin protein to induce neutralizing antibodies and therefore require yearly reformulation. T cell-based universal influenza vaccines focus on eliciting broadly cross-reactive T-cell responses, especially the tissue-resident memory T cell (T_RM) population in the respiratory tract, providing superior protection to circulating memory T cells. This study demonstrated that intramuscular (i.m.) administration of the adenovirus-based vaccine expressing influenza virus nucleoprotein (rAd/NP) elicited weak CD8 T_RM responses in the lungs and airways, and yielded poor protection against lethal influenza virus challenge. However, a novel "prime-and-deploy" strategy that combines i.m. vaccination of rAd/NP with subsequent intranasal administration of an empty adenovector induced strong NP-specific CD8⁺ T_RM cells and provided complete protection against influenza virus challenge. Overall, our results demonstrate that this "prime-and-deploy" vaccination strategy is potentially applicable to the development of universal influenza vaccines.

To overcome the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, vaccination campaigns are the highest priority of majority of countries. Limited supply and worldwide disproportionate availability issues for the approved vaccines, together with concerns about rare side-effects have recently initiated the switch to heterologous vaccination, commonly known as mixing of vaccines. The COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective in the general population. However, none of the vaccines is 100% efficacious or effective, with variants posing more challenges, resulting in breakthrough cases. This review summarizes the current knowledge of immune responses to variants of concern (VOC) and breakthrough infections. Furthermore, we discuss the scope of heterologous vaccination and future strategies to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, including fractionation of vaccine doses and alternative route of vaccination.