Designing epitope-focused vaccines via antigen reorientation.
Duo XuChunfeng LiAshley UtzPayton A B WeidenbacherShaogeng TangMrinmoy SanyalBali PulendranPeter S KimPublished in: bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology (2022)
Seasonal influenza vaccines induce a biased antibody response against the variable head of hemagglutinin, whereas conserved epitopes on the stem are a target for universal vaccines. Here we show that reorienting HA in an "upside-down" configuration sterically occludes the head and redirects the antibody response to the more exposed stem, thereby inducing broad cross-reactivity against hemagglutinins from diverse influenza strains.