Discordant Antigenic Drift of Neuraminidase and Hemagglutinin in H1N1 and H3N2 Influenza Viruses
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Discordant antigenic drift of neuraminidase and hemagglutinin in H1N1 and H3N2 influenza viruses Matthew R. Sandbultea, Kim B. Westgeestb, Jin Gaoa, Xiyan Xuc, Alexander I. Klimovc, Colin A. Russelld,e,DavidF.Burked, Derek J. Smithb,d,e, Ron A. M. Fouchierb, and Maryna C. Eichelbergera,1 aDivision of Viral Products, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, Food and Drug Administration, Bethesda, MD 20892; bDepartment of Virology, Erasmus Medical Center, 3000 CA, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; cInfluenza Division, National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA 30333; dDepartment of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EJ, United Kingdom; and eFogarty International Center, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892 Edited by Peter Palese, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY, and approved November 8, 2011 (received for review August 23, 2011) Seasonal epidemics caused by influenza virus are driven by anti- and animal sera (14). In the present study, we use this assay to genic changes (drift) in viral surface glycoproteins that allow evasion characterize the antigenic drift of NA in human H1N1 and H3N2 from preexisting humoral immunity. Antigenic drift is a feature of viruses recommended for United States influenza vaccines over not only the hemagglutinin (HA), but also of neuraminidase (NA). the past ∼15 y (Table S1). In the NI assay, we used panels of ferret We have evaluated the antigenic evolution of each protein in H1N1 antisera against each wild-type H1N1 and H3N2 virus and virus and H3N2 viruses used in vaccine formulations during the last 15 y reassortants generated by reverse genetics to combine the tar- by analysis of HA and NA inhibition titers and antigenic cartography. geted NA and a mismatched HA of the H6 subtype. Use of these As previously shown for HA, genetic changes in NA did not always reassortants prevented false NI signals because of interfering HA lead to an antigenic change. The noncontinuous pattern of NA antibodies. We then constructed antigenic maps from the data- drift did not correspond closely with HA drift in either subtype. sets, using multidimensional scaling to position the antigens and Although NA drift was demonstrated using ferret sera, we show antisera on the map, as previously described (12). that these changes also impact recognition by NA-inhibiting anti- bodies in human sera. Remarkably, a single point mutation in the NA Results and Discussion of A/Brisbane/59/2007 was primarily responsible for the lack of Antigenic Characterization of the HA and NA of H1N1 and H3N2 MICROBIOLOGY inhibition by polyclonal antibodies specific for earlier strains. These Viruses. H6 reassortant viruses containing NA of historical as well data underscore the importance of NA inhibition testing to define as recent H1N1 and H3N2 vaccine viruses (Table S1) were used to antigenic drift when there are sequence changes in NA. measure NI titers of strain-specific ferret antisera. There was minimal NI cross-reactivity between the phylogenetically distant usceptibility to infection with circulating influenza viruses is early NAs and antisera raised against recent seasonal strains of Sdetermined to a large degree by the presence or absence of the classical H1N1 (Table S2) and H3N2 (Table S3) human lin- strain-specific functional antibodies elicited by prior infection or eages, demonstrating extensive antigenic drift since introduction vaccination. Influenza viruses constantly evade antibody-medi- of these subtypes. Ferret serum raised against A/California/7/2009 ated inhibition of replication by antigenic drift, an accumulation (CA/09), a representative 2009 H1N1 pandemic (H1N1pdm) vi- of mutations in epitopes of major surface proteins, HA and rus, demonstrated a robust homologous NI antibody titer with neuraminidase (NA) (1). Antigenic drift has been studied most very low cross-reactive titers against NAs of the long-established extensively for HA, although NA has also been observed to human seasonal H1N1 lineage (Table S2). undergo antigenic drift (2–4). NA-specific antibodies can reduce Phylogenetic trees, genetic maps based on amino acid se- viral replication and disease severity in mice (5) and chickens (6), quences, and antigenic maps were generated for HA and NA and have similarly been associated with resistance against in- of H1N1 (Fig. 1) and H3N2 (Fig. 2) viruses recommended for fluenza in humans (7, 8). Despite this correlation with immunity, inclusion in 1996–2009 seasonal influenza vaccines. Since NI antigenic drift of NA is not routinely examined. Early studies data had not previously been used to generate an NA antigenic with a few virus strains demonstrated discordant antigenic drift map, we first established that end-point NI titers provided suf- of HA and NA (4), suggesting the virus can overcome host an- ficient sensitivity for the analysis. This process was done by tibody resistance by modifying either antigen. Although it is comparative analysis of end-point titers (inverse of the serum likely that NA’s drift is most often the result of antibody selec- dilution that inhibits NA activity ≥50%) and the precise 50% tion, antigenic change may on occasion be a consequence of a inhibition titer (IC50), the inverse of the serum dilution that functional change in HA (9). results in exactly 50% inhibition determined by nonlinear re- Vigilant surveillance by public health agencies is required to gression analysis (14) of ferret antisera generated in response to maximize the match between seasonal vaccine antigens and pre- H3N2 infection. The maps generated using these datasets were dominant circulating viruses (10, 11). At present, vaccine strain- very similar, with an excellent correlation of distances between 2 selection decisions are based on antigenic characterization of HA antigens on the map, r = 0.99 (Fig. S1). End-point NI titers coupled with HA and NA genetic data, also taking into consid- eration epidemiologic and human serologic data (11). Antigenic cartography using data from HA inhibition (HI) assays provides Author contributions: M.R.S. and M.C.E. designed research; M.R.S., K.B.W., J.G., and M.C.E. performed research; X.X., A.I.K., D.J.S., and R.A.M.F. contributed new reagents/analytic a tool to visualize and quantitate antigenic relatedness of the HAs tools; M.R.S., K.B.W., C.A.R., D.F.B., D.J.S., and R.A.M.F. analyzed data; and M.R.S., K.B.W., of circulating viruses (12) in relation to vaccine viruses. Antigenic R.A.M.F., and M.C.E. wrote the paper. characterization of NA can be performed using NA inhibition The authors declare no conflict of interest. (NI) assays to determine the extent of antibody-mediated in- This article is a PNAS Direct Submission. terference with enzyme activity (13), but the cumbersome nature Freely available online through the PNAS open access option. of the standard NI assay using large volumes of hazardous 1 To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: [email protected]. chemicals has precluded routine analysis of NA. We recently gov. fi developed a miniaturized format of this assay and con rmed its This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10. accuracy and sensitivity for analysis of NI antibody titers in human 1073/pnas.1113801108/-/DCSupplemental. www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1113801108 PNAS Early Edition | 1of6 Downloaded by guest on September 27, 2021 Fig. 1. Comparison of the antigenic and genetic evolution of NA and HA of influenza A (H1N1) virus. (A and B) Phylogenetic trees of the coding region of NA (A) and HA1 (B) nucleotide sequences. A/Brevig Mission/1918 was chosen as outgroup for both trees. Scale bars roughly represent 10% of nucleotide sub- stitutions between close relatives. (C) NA and (D) HA genetic maps. The vertical and horizontal axes represent genetic distance, in this case the number of amino acid substitutions between strains; the spacing between grid lines is 3 amino acid substitutions. (E) NA and (F) HA antigenic maps based on NI and HI data, in which the viruses are shown as circles and antisera as squares. The spacing between grid lines is one unit of antigenic distance, correspondingto a twofold dilution of antisera in the NI and HI assays. The orientations of all maps were chosen to roughly match the orientation of the HI antigenic map in F, and the color-coding of viruses is consistent among all panels. were therefore used in subsequent analyses. We also showed that greater than the antigenic distance between the HAs of these there was good correlation between antigenic distance deter- viruses (2.0 units). From this observation, we speculate that the mined using NI data in tables and the antigenic distance de- abrupt antigenic change of N1 NA may have been a factor termined from map location (Fig. S2)(r2 = 0.95 for N1 and r2 = contributing to the dominance of H1N1 in many parts of the 0.86 for N2 antigens), providing confidence that the antigenic Northern Hemisphere during the 2007/08 season (15). maps are representative of the raw data. To confirm the location The antigenic drift of NA was also not proportional to number of antigens on the map, NI assays were repeated using a larger of amino acid changes for H3N2 viruses isolated from the mid- number of antisera. There was excellent correlation between the 1990s [A/Wuhan/359/95 (WU/95)] to the 2009/10 Northern location of antigens generated by analyses of the first and second hemisphere formulation [A/Uruguay/716/2007 (UY/07), an A/ datasets (Fig. S3)(r2 = 0.98 for both N1 and N2 antigens). Brisbane/10/2007-like virus], even though phylogenetic analysis of The raw NI data as well as the antigenic map show that the NA the NAs of these viruses shows a chronologic progressive evolu- of human H1N1 viruses was in antigenic stasis for over a decade, tion at the nucleotide level (Fig.