Susceptibility of widely diverse influenza a viruses to PB2 polymerase inhibitor pimodivir.

Abstract Pimodivir exerts an antiviral effect on the early stages of influenza A virus replication by inhibiting the cap-binding function of polymerase basic protein 2 (PB2). In this study, we used a combination of sequence analysis and phenotypic methods to evaluate pimodivir susceptibility of influenza A viruses collected from humans and other hosts. Screening PB2 sequences for substitutions previously associated with reduced pimodivir susceptibility revealed a very low frequency among seasonal viruses circulating in the U.S. during 2015–2020 ( 100-fold reduced pimodivir susceptibility. Our findings demonstrate a broad inhibitory activity of pimodivir and expand the existing knowledge of amino acid substitutions that can reduce susceptibility to this investigational antiviral.