RESUMEN
Vaccination has been successfully used to prevent influenza for a long time. Influenza virus hemagglutinin (HA), which induces a humoral immune response in humans and protection against the flu, is the main antigenic component of modern influenza vaccines. However, new seasonal and pandemic influenza virus variants with altered structures of HA occasionally occur. This allows the pathogen to avoid neutralization with antibodies produced in response to previous vaccination. Development of a vaccine with the new variants of HA acting as antigens takes a long time. Therefore, during an epidemic, it is important to have passive immunization agents to prevent and treat influenza, which can be monoclonal or single-domain antibodies with universal specificity (broad-spectrum agents). We considered antibodies to conserved epitopes of influenza virus antigens as universal ones. In this paper, we tried to characterize the main B-cell epitopes of hemagglutinin and analyze our own and literature data on broadly neutralizing antibodies. We conducted a computer analysis of the best known conformational epitopes of influenza virus HAs using materials of different databases. The analysis showed that the core of the HA molecule, whose antibodies demonstrate pronounced heterosubtypic activity, can be used as a target for the search for and development of broad-spectrum antibodies to the influenza virus.
RESUMEN
Influenza viruses are characterized by a high degree of antigenic variability, which causes the annual emergence of flu epidemics and irregularly timed pandemics caused by viruses with new antigenic and biological traits. Novel approaches to vaccination can help circumvent this problem. One of these new methods incorporates genetic vaccines based on adenoviral vectors. Recombinant adenoviral vectors which contain hemagglutinin-encoding genes from avian H5N1 and H5N2 (Ad-HA5-1 and Ad-HA5-2) influenza viruses were obtained using the AdEasy Adenoviral Vector System (Stratagene). Laboratory mice received a double intranasal vaccination with Ad-HA5-1 and Ad-HA5-2. This study demonstrates that immunization with recombinant adenoviruses bearing the Ð 5 influenza virus hemagglutinin gene induces a immune response which protects immunized mice from a lethal dose of the H5 influenza virus. Moreover, it also protects the host from a lethal dose of the H1 virus, which belongs to the same clade as H5, but does not confer protection from the subtype H3 influenza virus, which belongs to a different clade.
