Complement 2: Blood Donations to Develop Vaccines Against Infectious Diseases

We need human blood to understand the immune response to infection and to test promising new vaccines against infectious diseases in the laboratory. One test is called the Serum Bactericidal Assay (or SBA), which is measure of how effective antibodies are at killing certain bacteria and can be an important measure of how effective a new vaccine may be. The samples would be used in the laboratory analysis of clinical trials of vaccines used in adults and children, and some samples in pre-clinical (animal) experiments testing new vaccines before they enter human-stage testing. Most people have some form of protection against most bacteria already, so not everyone is a suitable blood donor for this laboratory test. We therefore start by taking a small blood sample and test this one before asking for more blood if we found yours suitable for the work we do.