Emerging Viral Pathogens and Host Immunity: Advancing Pandemic Preparedness

The past two decades have underscored the persistent and evolving threat posed by emerging and re-emerging viral pathogens. Outbreaks caused by SARS, influenza viruses, Ebola, Zika, and most recently SARS-CoV-2 have repeatedly strained health systems, disrupted societies, and revealed critical gaps in global preparedness. Concurrently, transformative advances in genomics, immunology, data science, and vaccine and therapeutic platforms have reshaped our capacity to detect, characterize, and respond to viral threats with unprecedented speed and precision.Despite this scientific progress, the translation of discovery into timely, scalable, and equitable outbreak response remains uneven across regions and systems. Effective pandemic preparedness increasingly depends on integrated, international collaboration that bridges laboratory science, clinical investigation and field epidemiology. Reflecting this urgency, the 2026 Global Virus Network (GVN) Annual International Scientific Meeting, themed “Pandemic Preparedness?”, convened in Tampa, Florida, bringing together global experts to critically examine the scientific, immunological, and operational foundations of future readiness.This Research Topic builds on the momentum of the GVN meeting to address how advances in immunological understanding and viral science can be more effectively leveraged to prevent and mitigate future pandemics.It aims to synthesize insights from across the global virology and immunology communities to address a central challenge in modern infectious disease control: how to translate rapid advances in virology and immunology into earlier detection, faster response, and more resilient global systems for viral outbreak prevention and control.While innovations in pathogen sequencing, immune profiling, immunogen design, antiviral discovery, and computational modeling have accelerated markedly, these advances are often siloed or inconsistently implemented. This collection seeks to explore strategies for better alignment between basic discovery, clinical translation, and public health deployment, particularly in the context of preparedness for emerging viral threats.Contributions are welcomed from investigators who participated in the GVN meeting (a highly motivated group of contributors) as well as from the broader scientific community. Articles should highlight recent advances including real-time genomic and immunological surveillance, AI-assisted outbreak forecasting, next-generation and broadly protective vaccine platforms, host-directed and broad-spectrum antivirals, and novel point-of-care diagnostics. Equally important are studies addressing implementation science, health system readiness, workforce capacity, governance, and equitable access to countermeasures where these are grounded in immunological evidence or connect directly to immune-based outcomes.Immunology serves as a unifying foundation across all contributions, recognizing that diagnostics, therapeutics, vaccines, disease severity, and long-term outcomes are fundamentally shaped by host immune mechanisms. By bridging mechanistic immunology with operational preparedness, this Research Topic aims to define actionable pathways that strengthen global capacity to anticipate, detect, and contain viral threats before they escalate into widespread crises. Submissions without a demonstrable immunological component (cellular, humoral, innate, or mucosal) fall outside the scope of this collection.This Research Topic welcomes multidisciplinary submissions that connect viral biology and immunology with practical pandemic preparedness and response. We particularly encourage work that integrates laboratory discovery, clinical insight, and public health implementation, including studies with clear translational or policy-relevant implications.Article types may include original research, reviews, mini-reviews, perspectives and methods papers, consistent with Frontiers in Immunology guidelines. Themes of Interest include, but are not limited to:• Emerging and re-emerging viral pathogens and drivers of spillover risk• Innovations in genomic, immunological, and wastewater surveillance• Advances in viral diagnostics, vaccine technologies, and Immunotherapeutics• Antiviral resistance, immune escape, and countermeasure durability• Host–pathogen interactions and immune correlates of protection• Immunologically-informed modeling, forecasting, and data integration to inform outbreak response Topic editors: Sten Vermund, Sofia A Casares Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/81534/emerging-viral-pathogens-and-host-immunity-advancing-pandemic-preparedness