Antibody Focusing to Conserved Sites of Vulnerability: The Immunological Pathways for 'Universal' Influenza Vaccines.

ABSTRACT: Influenza virus remains a serious public health burden due to ongoing viral evolution. Vaccination remains the best measure of prophylaxis, yet current seasonal vaccines elicit strain-specific neutralizing responses that favor the hypervariable epitopes on the virus. This necessitates yearly reformulations of seasonal vaccines, which can be limited in efficacy and also shortchange pandemic preparedness. Universal vaccine development aims to overcome these deficits by redirecting antibody responses to functionally conserved sites of viral vulnerability to enable broad coverage. However, this is challenging as such antibodies are largely immunologically silent, both following vaccination and infection. Defining and then overcoming the immunological basis for such subdominant or 'immuno-reces

SUBMITTER: Sangesland M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7914524 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature