Humoral responses to rapidly evolving pathogens often recognize highly variable, epitopes and do not provide long-term protection. Next-generation viral vaccines aim to elicit humoral responses that target more conserved epitopes on viral proteins that ultimately lead to broad and durable protection. Conserved epitopes such as the receptor binding site on viral surface-exposed glycoproteins are one such target. As these sites are necessary to engage host attachment factors required for viral entry, they are generally limited in sequence variation (i.e., viral escape) without compromising viral fitness. Here we describe structure-guided immunogens based on the influenza hemagglutinin and coronavirus spike glycoproteins that focus humoral responses to the receptor binding site and motif, respectively. Characterization of the elicited responses at the single B cell level provides a mechanistic understanding of immune focusing to these conserved sites. These immunogens may serve as candidates for next-generation influenza and coronavirus vaccines.

Eliciting protective antibodies targeting conserved viral epitopes by structure-guided immunogens

ACS Fall 2021

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.