33rd International Dynamics & Evolution of Human Viruses

Session

Vaccines & Immune Escape

May 21, 2026, 1:40 PM

Conveners

Vaccines & Immune Escape

• Alison Hill (Johns Hopkins University)
• Brittany Magalis (University of Florida)

8. A SINGLE DOSE OF MONOCLONAL ANTIBODY DELAYS HIV-1 INFECTION IN OWL MONKEYS

Sara Sawyer (University of Colorado Boulder)

5/21/26, 1:40 PM

Vaccines & immune escape

Oral

All animal models of HIV-1 are either immunocompromised or rely on the primate virus, SIV. We recently employed tools from population genetics and viral evolution to engineer a host switch of HIV-1 into fully immunocompetent Nancy Ma’s owl monkeys (Aotus nancymaae). These animals can be infected with a minimally modified form of HIV-1, where infection recapitulates key hallmarks of infection...

44. Deep haplotype-resolved sequencing reveals the prevalence of genetic background specific escape mutations in broadly neutralizing antibody trials

Elena Romero (Department of Genome Sciences, University of Washington)

5/21/26, 2:00 PM

Vaccines & immune escape

Oral

Broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs) are an emerging HIV therapeutic approach undermined by frequent intra-host viral escape. Predicting escape pathways for different bNAbs is a crucial step in combining them into effective multi-component therapies, but identifying escape mutations from in vitro screens may not yield results that are portable across the diverse genetic backgrounds found...

37. THE EVOLUTIONARY AND EPIDEMIOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES OF WANING IMMUNITY TO RESPIRATORY VIRUSES

Rustom Antia (Emory University)

5/21/26, 2:20 PM

Vaccines & immune escape

Oral

Reinfections with respiratory viruses are thought to be driven by ongoing antigenic immune escape in the viral population. However, this does not explain why antigenic variation is frequently observed in respiratory viruses and not systemically replicating viruses. Here, we argue that the rapid rate of waning immunity in the respiratory tract is a key driver of antigenic evolution in...

50. Unmasking Pathogen-Host Local Structural Mimicry in the AI era

Tung Nguyen (University of Cambridge)

5/21/26, 2:40 PM

Software, tools & methods

Oral

Molecular mimicry, where pathogen proteins structurally resemble host antigens, is a central hypothesis in autoimmune pathology. However, current detection methods are largely limited to sequence homology or domain-level alignment, failing to identify the subtle, discontinuous structural "patches" that often drive antibody cross-reactivity. To resolve this computational bottleneck, we present...