Glycoengineered erythrocytes for better influenza vaccines

The objective of this ERC PoC project is to establish technical and commercial feasibility of our recently developed glycan-engineered red blood cells (RBCs) for antigenic characterization of circulating influenza A/H3N2 viruses. Due to the rapid evolution of influenza A/H3N2 viruses, antigenic characterization by the widely used hemagglutination inhibition (HI) assay is not possible anymore. Continuous antigenic characterization of influenza A viruses is, however, essential for the development of protective seasonal vaccines. The ERC program “sugar-enable” has developed glycoengineered RBCs that make it possible again to antigenically characterize circulating A/H3N2 viruses by the standard HI assay, and it is expected that the cells will find application in hundreds of laboratories worldwide.