Recently, our article entitled "The influenza hemagglutinin stem antibody CR9114: Evidence for a narrow evolutionary path towards universal protection," appeared in a special issue of Frontiers in Virology. Read it here.

The influenza virus comes in many shapes and forms. There are twenty subtypes (H1 to H18, B/Yam and B/Vic) within three broad groups (influenza A1, A2 and B) that frequently infect humans. Scientists have long searched for a pan-influenza vaccine effective against all these types of influenza.

The closest any drug has come to pan-influenza protection is the human monoclonal antibody CR9114, which has been shown to protect against both influenza A and B subgroups. In our review we analyzed CR9114's structural characteristics, evolutionary pathway and mechanisms of pan-influenza protection.

CR9114 provides broad in vivo protection through its use of multiple mechanisms of action, ranging from fusion inhibition to steric hindrance of neuraminidase and Fc effector functions.

This review is the first to encapsulate the ten years of research done to-date on CR9114. Hundreds of papers investigated CR9114 or used it as a control or a proof-of-principle, including multiple papers in Science and Nature.