Hensley Lab
@scottehensley.bsky.social
dad, viral immunologist, professor
It was always a joy talking with Helen, because she understood so much about flu and was a master communicator. This is such a loss for our community. www.statnews.com/2026/10/13/h...
Helen Branswell, whose reporting on infectious diseases and public health drew acclaim, dies at 69
Helen Branswell, STAT's infectious disease reporter who earned the respect of experts and public health officials with her accessible, prescient dispatches, has died at age 69.
statnews.com
@lhmoncla.bsky.social and I are happy to present Dr. Ort! Congrats Jordan!! #@ceirrnetwork.bsky.social trainee successfully defends his PhD!
This is a really important development. It appears H1N1 cases are rising in the western part of the United States, and these viruses have a key HA substitution that @jbloomlab.bsky.social recently demonstrated is targeted by antibodies in young people. 1/4 www.kuow.org/health/2026-...
The flu has arrived early in Washington state
Flu cases are surging in Washington state, much sooner than when health officials usually expect the illness to peak in winter.
kuow.org
Do you live in Philly? Has your cat been acting crazy? Well, it is likely this craziness is not due to H5N1 infection--but rather the fact that your cat is a cat. In this new preprint with @lhmoncla.bsky.social we find low H5N1 seroprevalence rates in Philly cats. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Clade 2.3.4.4b H5N1 influenza virus and SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence among owned and feral cats in Philadelphia and surrounding communities
Clade 2.3.4.4b H5NX influenza viruses have spread widely in birds since 2020. In addition to causing disease in birds, these viruses have infected a variety of mammals, including humans. Clade 2.3.4.4...
biorxiv.org
Karolinska Institutet KI is inviting applications for 21 Assistant Professor positions in medicine and health @ki.se ki.se/en/about-ki/...
Assistant Professor recruitment programme 2026
Karolinska Institutet continues to grow a global community of excellence. In summer 2026, KI is inviting applications for 21 Assistant Professor positions in medicine and health. We are once again loo...
ki.se
Publishing papers and receiving grants are important...but seeing your PhD student receive a 'thesis of the year' award at graduation is priceless! Congrats Grace! @cambupenn.bsky.social @ceirrnetwork.bsky.social
Jordan's paper showing that immune history affects levels of cross-reactive H5N1 NA antibodies was just posted at Nature Communications. Congrats to Jordan and the team! See thread below when we originally posted on medRxiv... www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Cross-reactive human antibody responses to H5N1 influenza virus neuraminidase are shaped by immune history - Nature Communications
H5N1 avian influenza viruses have pandemic potential, yet antibody responses to their neuraminidase aren’t well studied. Here, the authors demonstrate that childhood exposure to H1N1 viruses enhances ...
nature.com
Hensley Lab@scottehensley.bsky.social · last yr.A new study led by @cambupenn.bsky.social Jordan Ort in my lab was posted on medRxiv. We found that humans infected with H1N1 viruses in childhood have high levels of Abs that cross-react to the NA of H5N1 viruses...decades after their childhood H1N1 infections. 1/ www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
New results published in the New England Journal of Medicine finds Moderna’s mRNA flu vaccine gave more protection against illness than the standard flu shot in a Phase 3 clinical trial.
Moderna’s mRNA flu vaccine more effective than standard shot in late-stage trial
An mRNA-based flu shot could make a huge difference in flu prevention, allowing scientists to pick a better strain match.
nbcnews.to
The #hantavirus outbreak on the cruise ship off the coast of Africa is a serious public health event that needs to be handled properly. But if you are having #Covid flashbacks, put those worries to rest. The risk here is to people on the ship & their close contacts. www.statnews.com/2026/05/07/h...
Cruise ship hantavirus outbreak worries experts, though they discount pandemic fears
Scientists are worried that hantaviruses haven’t been as well studied as they ought to be, but not that the MV Hondius cruise ship is ground zero for the next pandemic.
statnews.com
Swiss authorities have confirmed a case of #hantavirus identified in a passenger from the MV Hondius cruise ship. He had responded to an email from the ship’s operator informing the passengers of the health event, and presented himself to a hospital in Zurich, Switzerland, and is receiving care. 1️⃣
This is not good. Most likely not human to human transmission but need to keep close eye on this. www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...
Cruise ship at center of suspected deadly hantavirus outbreak refused permission to dock
The cruise operator said in a statement that the ship may sail from Cape Verde to Las Palmas or Tenerife in the Canary Islands and dock there.
nbcnews.com
WHO is aware of and supporting a public health event involving a cruise vessel sailing in the Atlantic Ocean.
Check out our new study published today showing that HA head-reactive B cells primed by H3N2 infections in the 1990s can be recalled by contemporary pH1N1 viruses. A huge Penn-CEIRR effort, led by Grace Li from my lab. Congrats to Grace and team! www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...
Childhood immunological imprinting of cross-subtype antibodies targeting the hemagglutinin head domain of influenza viruses
Li et al. isolated H1/H3 cross-reactive antibodies targeting a conserved epitope in the HA head. These antibodies were mostly found in people born in the 1990s and can be elicited in ferrets by sequen...
cell.com
We are recruiting 1-2 postdoctoral fellows to investigate the specificity of human anti-influenza virus antibodies, and to determine how these antibodies impact global antigenic drift of influenza viruses. Join our lab at Penn in Philly. Reach out if you are interested in applying! Please repost!
H5N1 in dairy cows largely has disappeared from the news--a reflection of steeply declining detections. But it continues to circulate on dairies, and researchers continue to debate critical questions about how the virus moves between farms and within herds. www.science.org/content/arti...
Two years after it emerged, ‘cow flu’ is still circulating—and baffling scientists
Researchers still aren’t sure how H5N1 influenza spreads between cows and from farm to farm
science.org
Holy cow! Our new study showing that H5 mRNA-LNP vaccines are safe and effective in lactating dairy cows is now posted on @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social! We found that our vaccine elicits protective responses in 2,000 pound dairy cows! 1/ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Happy to see the peer-reviewed version of this manuscript published yesterday in NEJM-Evidence. @nejm.org evidence.nejm.org/doi/full/10....
Antibodies Elicited by the 2025–2026 Influenza Vaccine
A new H3N2 variant (named subclade K) possesses several key hemagglutinin substitutions and is circulating widely during the 2025–2026 influenza season. We sought to determine whether the 2025–2026...
evidence.nejm.org
Hensley Lab@scottehensley.bsky.social · 9mo agoWe find that subclade K viruses are antigenically advanced; however, this year's flu vaccine surprisingly elicited antibodies in many individuals that efficiently recognized these viruses. The implications are clear: go get this year’s vaccine if you haven’t already! www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...
Stanley Plotkin had a major hand in the development of a number of vaccines in use today; he designed the rubella vaccine. He remembers the world before widespread use of vaccines & knows what's coming as vaccine policy is rewritten & vaccine confidence is eroded. www.statnews.com/2026/03/02/s...
A titan of vaccine development sees his field’s achievements slip away
Stanley Plotkin, the 93-year-old "godfather of vaccines," is watching his field’s achievements slip away.
statnews.com
Our preprint examining the specificity of human antibodies that cross-react with subclade K H3N2 viruses was posted this morning on medRxiv. These studies have implications on what vaccine strains should be selected for next year’s influenza season. 1/ www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...
Mapping the specificity of H3N2 strain-specific and cross-reactive human neutralizing antibodies elicited by the 2025-2026 influenza vaccine
An H3N2 variant, named subclade K, continues to circulate widely during the 2025-2026 influenza season. This virus possesses a hemagglutinin (HA) protein that has eleven substitutions relative to the ...
medrxiv.org
We have posted data providing real-time measurement of human neutralizing antibody landscape to seasonal influenza. Data explain spread of subclades K (H3N2) & D.3.1.1 (H1N1), identify subclade K subvariants w reduced neutralization, & can inform choice of strains for next vaccine.
A very few times in my career, I've done an interview that stunned me so much that I've gotten off the phone and walked into furniture. This was one of them. I'm grateful to this mom for her courage and vulnerability in doing this interview. www.cnn.com/2026/01/16/h...
A 4-year-old died of flu complications. Her mother has a message for other parents | CNN
Four-year-old Ellie Rudd – who loved mud and getting dressed up and having dance parties with her brother and sisters – died January 6, after the flu and a co-infection with an adenovirus turned into ...
cnn.com
“This isn’t perfect, but if you can decrease your chance of getting flu this year by fourfold, man, that’s a vaccine that I want.” www.cnn.com/2026/01/07/h...
Wondering if you should get a flu shot? Here’s what science says | CNN
Flu is making people miserable from coast to coast, thanks in large part to a new strain called subclade K.
cnn.com
“Although it’s not a complete match with what’s circulating, this vaccine appears to have the capacity to produce antibodies that will likely provide protection.” www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...
How effective is the flu shot this year? New report shows promising results
While the new findings are encouraging, "vaccines won’t do any good if people don’t get them," one expert said.
nbcnews.com
We find that subclade K viruses are antigenically advanced; however, this year's flu vaccine surprisingly elicited antibodies in many individuals that efficiently recognized these viruses. The implications are clear: go get this year’s vaccine if you haven’t already! www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...
Antibodies elicited by the 2025-2026 influenza vaccine in humans
A new H3N2 variant (named subclade K) possesses several key hemagglutinin substitutions and is circulating widely during the 2025-2026 influenza season. In this report, we completed experiments to det...
medrxiv.org
Nice in-depth story on immune memory by @amandabkeener.bsky.social in @nature.com. “If we can develop multivalent vaccines that have many different flu antigens in them, we can replace original antigenic sin with a blessing of induced immunity.” www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Immunological sin: how a person’s earliest flu infections dictate life-long immunity
Researchers are striving to understand the impact a phenomenon known as original antigenic sin has on immunity to the virus.
nature.com
“There may be less of a vaccine mismatch than many people initially believed.” More on this very soon from our group...Go get your vaccine if you haven't already! www.nytimes.com/2025/12/17/w...
New Variant Raises Concerns of Another Bad Flu Season
nytimes.com
I am excited to share that our work, in which we have dissected the signals driven by the nucleoside-modified mRNA and LNP components of mRNA vaccines that regulate germinal center (GC) responses, is now published in Cell! www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
Distinct components of mRNA vaccines cooperate to instruct efficient germinal center responses
This study dissects the individual contributions of the different components of mRNA vaccines to immune responses. Nucleoside-modified mRNA promotes the production of type I interferons that act on de...
cell.com
A picture is worth a 1000 words. The birth dose of hepatitis B vaccines in the USA eliminated perinatally acquired hepatitis B infection from over 20,000 cases a year before the vaccine was introduced to <20 cases a year. The gaslighting by the current members ACIP is obscene, unethical and cruel.
