Role of genetic and structural insights of neutralizing antibodies to guide viral vaccine design

Highly potent broadly neutralizing antibody (bnAb)-based therapeutics, prophylactics and vaccines are promising and attractive strategies to tackle various infectious diseases including SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19, HIV/AIDS, DENV, ZIKV, Flu, EBOV, HCV, HBV etc. Human infectious diseases are a major cause of morbidly and mortality throughout the history.

Presently, the leading strategy in innovative next-generation immunotherapeutic and vaccines design is to develop and elicit broadly neutralizing antibodies targeting conserved regions, respectively. Immunogenetic information of potent nAbs obtained from deep sequencing or single cell analysis of B cell repertoire (BCR) can provide important information to understanding their natural development during the course of infection, epitope specificity, frequency of B cells eliciting potent nAbs in human B cell repertoire and vaccination strategies. Further, structural studies of potent nAbs in complex with antigens provide useful mechanistic insights for the development of rational vaccine design. The aim is to provide comprehensive information on all design and development of innovative next-generation immunotherapeutic and vaccines against human infectious diseases. To achieve this goal, it is essential to understand the structural biology and immunogenetics of B cells that elicit potent nAbs.

We seek Original Research articles, Perspectives, Mini-Review, Review, Brief research reports, Commentary and Opinion articles covering viral human infections/diseases. But not limited to the following topics:

• antigen specific B cells

• identification of novel neutralizing antibodies

• information of neutralizing antibodies structures

• epitope-paratope interactions

• BCR Deep sequencing to understand evolution of neutralizing antibodies

• 10x genomics-based antibody VDJ analysis

• single B cell repertoire

• structure guided-vaccine design

• reverse Vaccinology 2.0

• mechanistic insights of broadly neutralizing antibodies

• immunogenetics of broadly neutralizing antibodies

• structural and immunogenetic information of engineered neutralizing antibodies

Keywords: Infectious diseases, Broadly Neutralizing antibodies, Structure-guided vaccine design, Viruses, Epitope-paratope interactions

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.