Original Antigenic Sin: Friend or Foe in Developing a Broadly Cross-Reactive Vaccine to Influenza?

In this issue of Cell Host & Microbe, two articles ( Lee et al., 2019 Lee J. Paparoditis P. Horton A.P. Frühwirth A. McDaniel J.R. Jung J. Boutz D.R. Hussein D.A. Tanno Y. Pappas L. et al. Persistent antibody clonotypes dominate the serum response to influenza over multiple years and repeated vaccinations. Cell Host Microbe. 2019; 25 ( this issue) : 367-376 Google Scholar , Henry et al., 2019 Henry C. Zheng N.-Y. Huang M. Cabanov A. Rojas K.T. Kaur K. Andrews S.F. Palm A.-K.E. Cheng Y.-Q. Li Y. et al. Influenza virus vaccination elicits poorly adapted B cell responses in eldery individuals. Cell Host Microbe. 2019; 25 ( this issue) : 357-366 Google Scholar ) find the influenza-specific antibody repertoire in humans becomes static over time and with age, despite repeated exposures. Identified persistent dominant clones target conserved viral epitopes, supporting the feasibility of a universal influenza vaccine