| abstract |
The present invention provides, among other things, a novel and improved method for generating "mosaic" influenza antigenic polypeptides including hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA) polypeptides based on unique combination of epitope patterns that maximize exposure to epitopes present across multiple HA or NA sequences and therefore improved influenza strain coverage. In particular, the present invention provides engineered H1N1 influenza hemagglutinin (HA) polypeptides that are comprised of novel combinations of protective epitopes and antigenic regions from multiple H1N1 viral strains. Such engineered HA polypeptides have improved properties over HA polypeptides developed through conventional approaches that rely on consensus alignments of viral sequences. |