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Bringing immunofocusing into focus

Sriharshita Musunuri1,2, Payton A B Weidenbacher1,3, Peter S Kim4,5,6

  • 1Stanford ChEM-H, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA.

NPJ Vaccines
|January 9, 2024
PubMed

Immunofocusing is a strategy to create immunogens that redirect humoral immune responses towards a targeted epitope and away from non-desirable epitopes. Immunofocusing methods often aim to develop "universal" vaccines that provide broad protection against highly variant viruses such as influenza virus, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1), and most recently, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). We use existing examples to illustrate five main immunofocusing strategies-cross-strain boosting, mosaic display, protein dissection, epitope scaffolding, and epitope masking. We also discuss obstacles for immunofocusing like immune imprinting. A thorough understanding, advancement, and application of the methods we outline here will enable the design of high-resolution vaccines that protect against future viral outbreaks.

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