Deciphering the mystery of influenza virus A antigenic drift and immune escape

Ma, Yongping; Fang, Changyin

The biggest challenge of influenza A virus vaccine development is the constant mutation of the virus, especially the antigenic drift. Therefore, we suggest establishing a research system for upgrading of current influenza A vaccines. The most fundamental but neglected thing is to determine the immune escape mutation (IEM) map (IEMM) of 20 amino acids in linear epitope to reveal the precise mechanism of the viral immune escape. Based on this assumption, we primarily divided IEM of HA-tag linear epitope into four types according to antibody affinity by ELISA. Our aim is to attract scholars to establish of IEMM library to deal with influenza A virus mutations in the future.