A multi-institutional research collaboration studying influenza virus evolution and human immune responses, funded by the National Institutes of Health.
The Flu Project addresses fundamental questions about how antibodies develop, evolve, and provide protection against seasonal and pandemic influenza strains. Our research focuses on understanding the complex dynamics between viral evolution and host immune responses.
Key objectives include tracking antibody evolution over time, understanding cross-reactivity between influenza strains, evaluating vaccine responses, and analyzing the co-evolution of virus and immune responses across multiple influenza seasons.
Our work encompasses viral evolution studies including seasonal strain emergence and pandemic preparedness, immune response analysis through B-cell repertoire sequencing and antibody characterization, vaccine research for improved immunogenicity and universal vaccine development, and clinical applications including biomarker identification and therapeutic antibody discovery.
AntibodyDB was developed specifically to support Flu Project research objectives, providing specialized tools for managing longitudinal cohort data, tracking multi-timepoint samples, and analyzing complex antibody sequence datasets generated by our studies.
The platform enables B-cell lineage reconstruction, clonal family identification, somatic hypermutation analysis, and cross-reactive antibody discovery across our research collaborations.
Our findings contribute to improved vaccine strain selection, enhanced pandemic preparedness, and the development of broadly neutralizing antibody therapeutics. The research supports next-generation vaccine design and personalized medicine approaches for influenza prevention and treatment.
NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH
P01AI089618
This research is supported by NIH program project grant P01AI089618.
Study Design: Longitudinal cohort studies with multi-institutional collaboration
Approach: High-throughput B-cell receptor repertoire sequencing, computational phylogenetics, functional antibody characterization, and clinical correlation studies
For detailed information about research methodologies, findings, and team members:
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