Peer-Reviewed Publication
Nat Commun2026June 22, 2026Journal Article
Persistence of memory: lifespan dynamics of the human antiviral antibody reactome.
Moriah M Mitchell1,2,3, Tomasz Kula1,2, Jennifer L Remmel4,5,6, Siyang Xia4,5,7, Ellen L Shrock1,2, Yumei Leng1,2, H Benjamin Larman8,9, Yu Chen10, Mikael Knip11,12, Marianna Cortese13, Michael J Mina4,5,14,15, Alberto Ascherio5,13,16, Stephen J Elledge17,18
1Division of Genetics, Department of Medicine, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
2Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
3Program in Systems, Synthetic, and Quantitative Biology, Harvard University, Boston, MA, USA.
4Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA.
5Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA.
6Generate: Biomedicines, Somerville, MA, USA.
7Intellia Therapeutics, Cambridge, MA, USA.
8Department of Pathology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA.
9Institute for Cell Engineering, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA.
10Department of Population Health, NYU Grossman School of Medicine, New York, NY, USA.
11Research Program for Clinical and Molecular Metabolism, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
12Turku Bioscience Centre, University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland.
13Department of Nutrition, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA.
14Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA.
15Department of Pathology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
16Channing Division of Network Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
17Division of Genetics, Department of Medicine, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA. selledge@genetics.med.harvard.edu.
18Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA. selledge@genetics.med.harvard.edu.
Abstract
The human antiviral antibody reactome provides a cumulative molecular record of immune exposures. Using high-resolution VirScan profiling, we compared epitope-level antibody responses across early childhood and adulthood. Infants are born with maternal IgG antibodies, but these antibodies decay rapidly and are replaced by endogenous responses to ~22 new viral exposures within three years. Pediatri…
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