Katie Gostic

Title

Graduate student
UCLA Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Education

AB, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University

Office

4000 Terasaki Life Sciences Building
(310) 206-8203

Email

kgostic@g.ucla.edu

Personal website

Influenza pandemics occur when antigenically novel influenza viruses emerge from animal reservoirs and gain the ability to spread in humans. A lack of pre-existing immunity in the human population has always been thought to facilitate these pandemic emergence events. But exciting new results from my dissertation show that novel influenza viruses might actually emerge onto a landscape of strong, pre-existing immunity in the human population. This pre-existing immunity appears to be governed by antigenic seniority or original antigenic sin acting on conserved epitopes. In other words, humans appear to develop preferential, lifelong immune memory against one or the other phylogenetic group of influenza's hemagglutinin antigen--depending on which group they were exposed to as children. Thus, patterns of pre-existing immunity can be estimated based on birth year, and known patterns of historical influenza circulation.

These results provide new scope to predict invasion probabilities for specific influenza subtypes, and pandemic age distributions. Please see my personal website for more on my research.

4. Gostic, K.M., Ambrose, M.R., Worobey, M, Lloyd-Smith, J.O. (2017) Maternal antibodies' role in immunity - Response. Science. 355: 705. PDF - Web

3. Gostic, K.M., Ambrose, M.R., Worobey, M, Lloyd-Smith, J.O. (2016) Potent protection against H5N1 and H7N9 influenza via childhood hemagglutinin imprinting. Science. 354: 722-726. PDF - Web

2. Buhnerkempe MG, Gostic KM, Park M, Ahsan P, Belser JA, Lloyd-Smith JO. (2015) Mapping influenza transmission in the ferret model to transmission in humans. Elife 4:e07969. PDF - Web

1. Gostic KM, Kucharski AJ, Lloyd-Smith JO. (2015) Effectiveness of traveller screening for emerging pathogens is shaped by epidemiology and natural history of infection. Elife 4:e05564. PDF - Web - Press coverage