Evolutionary forecasting for seasonal influenza and SARS-CoV-2

Trevor Bedford

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center / Howard Hughes Medical Institute
14 Dec 2023
Division of Viral Products Seminar Series
FDA

Disclosure

Trevor Bedford has no relevant financial relationships with commercial interests

None of the planners have any financial interests or relationships with a commercial entity

Seasonal influenza

Rapid turnover of the A/H3N2 influenza population

Clades emerge, die out and take over

Clades show rapid turnover

Dynamics driven by antigenic drift

Drift necessitates vaccine updates

H3N2 vaccine updates occur every 1-2 years

Vaccine strain selection by WHO

Nextflu

Project to provide a real-time view of the evolving influenza population

All in collaboration with Richard Neher

Nextflu → Nextstrain

Real-time tracking of pathogen evolution

Richard Neher,   Ivan Aksamentov,   Jennifer Chang   James Hadfield,   Emma Hodcroft,   John Huddleston,   Jover Lee,   Victor Lin,   Cornelius Roemer,   Thomas Sibley

Current view of H3N2 from nextstrain.org/flu

Forecasting seasonal influenza evolution

Fitness models project strain frequencies

Future frequency $x_i(t+\Delta t)$ of strain $i$ derives from strain fitness $f_i$ and present day frequency $x_i(t)$, such that

$$x_i(t+\Delta t) = \frac{1}{Z(t)} \, x_i(t) \, \mathrm{exp}(f_i \, \Delta t)$$

Strain frequencies at each timepoint are normalized by total frequency $Z(t)$. This captures clonal interference between competing lineages.

Integrating genotypes and phenotypes improves long-term forecasts of seasonal influenza A/H3N2 evolution

with John Huddleston, Richard Neher, Dave Wentworth, Becky Kondor, John McCauley, Hideki Hasegawa, Kanta Subbarao and others

Match strain forecast to retrospective circulation

Two inputs

• Estimate of present-day strain frequencies $x_i(t)$
• Estimate of present-day strain fitnesses $f_i$

Strain frequency estimated via region-weighted KDE

Strain fitness estimated from viral attributes

The fitness $f$ of strain $i$ is estimated as

$$f_i = \beta^\mathrm{A} \, f_i^\mathrm{A} + \beta^\mathrm{B} \, f_i^\mathrm{B} + \ldots$$

where $f^A$, $f^B$, etc... are different standardized viral attributes and $\beta^A$, $\beta^B$, etc... coefficients are trained based on historical evolution

Future population depends on frequency and fitness

Forecast assessed based on weighted distance match to observed future population (earth mover's distance)

Poor fit

Good fit

Train in 6-year sliding windows from 1995 to 2015 with most recent years held out as test

Composite models favor combinations of HI drift, local branching index and non-epitope fitness

Model successfully predicts clade growth and best pick from model is generally close to best possible retrospective pick

SARS-CoV-2

SARS-CoV-2 continues to show remarkable capacity for evolution

Mutations at spike S1 propel escape from population immunity

These mutations are accruing much more rapidly than other endemic viruses

New variants emerge that escape from existing population immunity and spread rapidly

Novel variants sweep globally in months rather than years

Variant frequency dynamics

Population genetic expectation of variant frequency under selection

$x' = \frac{x \, (1+s)}{x \, (1+s) + (1-x)}$ for frequency $x$ over one generation with selective advantage $s$

$x(t) = \frac{x_0 \, (1+s)^t}{x_0 \, (1+s)^t + (1-x_0)}$ for initial frequency $x_0$ over $t$ generations

Trajectories are linear once logit transformed via $\mathrm{log}(\frac{x}{1 - x})$

Consistent frequency dynamics in logit space (BA.2 Mar 2022)

Consistent frequency dynamics in logit space (BA.5 Jul 2022)

Consistent frequency dynamics in logit space (JN.1 Dec 2023)

Multinomial logistic regression

Multinomial logistic regression across $n$ variants models the probability of a virus sampled at time $t$ belonging to variant $i$ as

$$\mathrm{Pr}(X = i) = x_i(t) = \frac{p_i \, \mathrm{exp}(f_i \, t)}{\sum_{1 \le j \le n} p_j \, \mathrm{exp}(f_j \, t) }$$

with $2n$ parameters consisting of $p_i$ the frequency of variant $i$ at initial timepoint and $f_i$ the growth rate or fitness of variant $i$.

Original VOC viruses had substantially increased transmissibility

Variant frequencies across countries from Feb 2022 to present

We find that recent variants like EG.5.1 are ~250% fitter than original Omicron BA.1

Evolution driving epidemics

Many fewer reported cases in England post-Omicron

ONS Infection Survey provides rare source of ground truth

Roughly 1 in 3 infections detected in 2021, while 1 in 40 in 2023

~110% population attack rate from March 2022 to March 2023

Post-Omicron period shows consistent IFR of 0.04%

Forecasting

Assessing MLR models for short-term frequency forecasting

Retrospective projections twice monthly during 2022

+30 day short-term forecasts across different countries

MLR models generate accurate short-term forecasts

30 days out, countries range from 6 to 10% mean absolute error

Clade and lineage forecasts continuously updated at nextstrain.org

Pango-level growth advantages place JN.1 far ahead of the curve

Could we predict the spread of new mutations using DMS data?

Escape from antibodies that potently neutralize BA.2

Can calculate escape of arbitrary RBD against antibodies known to neutralize BA.2

Strong correlation between DMS immune escape and lineage-level MLR growth advantage

Acknowledgements

Flu: WHO Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System, other data producers, GISAID, John Huddleston, Richard Neher, Jennifer Chang, Jover Lee

SARS-CoV-2: Data producers from all over the world, GISAID, the Nextstrain team, Katie Kistler, Marlin Figgins, Eslam Abousamra, Jover Lee, James Hadfield

Bedford Lab: John Huddleston,   James Hadfield,   Katie Kistler,   Thomas Sibley,   Jover Lee,   Cassia Wagner,   Miguel Paredes,   Nicola Müller,   Marlin Figgins,   Victor Lin,   Jennifer Chang,   Allison Li,   Eslam Abousamra,   Donna Modrell,   Nashwa Ahmed,   Cécile Tran Kiem