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#2610 Ageing and the response to vaccination

Speaker: Michelle Linterman

Date: Saturday 23rd May 2026  10am-1pm

Venue: Waikanae Presbyterian Church Hall, 43 Ngaio Road, Waikanae

Inspired by a great teacher at Paraparaumu College, Dr Michelle Linterman began her science career with study at VUW, followed by a PHD at the Australian National University then 16 years in the UK at Cambridge University and the Babraham Institute. She returned to NZ in 2025 and is the Chief Scientist and Programme Leader at the Malaghan Institute and an Associate Group Leader at Babraham Institute in the UK. Michelle is one of the relatively small number of scientists around the world actively looking into the ageing immune system and how to improve the way it responds to vaccination.

“It doesn’t matter what other complications you may have, when it comes to health the impact of ageing trumps everything. Almost everything has an intersection with age and, in research, for the most part, it gets ignored,” said Michelle in a recent interview. Michelle believes that we can develop better vaccines that specifically support good immune responses in the later years of life, which is why it’s a focus of her team’s research at the Malaghan Institute.

Most vaccines provide protection by generating long-lived antibody-secreting plasma cells that block the ability of a pathogen to establish an infection. The production of vaccine-specific antibody can occur via the germinal centre response, a specialised microenvironment that produces memory B cells and long-lived antibody secreting plasma cells. With advancing age, the magnitude of germinal centre response declines, resulting in decreased production of long-lived high-affinity plasma cells, decreased serum antibody levels after vaccination, and thus impaired protection against subsequent infection. Although B cells are the cellular source of long-lived plasma cells, age-dependent changes in B cells are not responsible for the decline in the germinal centre with age.  

Michelle’s presentation will focus on the age-dependent changes that are causally linked to diminished vaccine responses in older individuals and potential ways to bolster the immunity by vaccines.