Xiaojuan Zhang, Stephanie Joy-Ann Lam, Lin‐Lei Chen, Carol Ho-Yan Fong, Wan-Mui Chan, Jonathan Daniel Ip, Shaofeng Deng, Siwen Liu, Rachel Chun-Yee Tam, Pui Wang, Kwok‐Hung Chan, King‐Pui Florence Chan, Jcm Ho, Jie Zhou, Kwok‐Yung Yuen, Honglin Chen, Kelvin Kai‐Wang To
Three critically ill or fatal avian influenza A(H5N1) human infections have been reported in North America since November 2024. Notably, all were infected with genotype D1.1 instead of B3.13, the dominant genotype before November 2024. Here, we demonstrated that D1.1 could replicate to higher titers in human nasal and airway organoid-derived transwell monolayers from 6 donors. D1.1 exhibited a better binding to α2,3- and α2,6-linked sialic acid than B3.13. No significant differences in most inflammatory or antiviral cytokines/chemokines were observed. These observations suggest that D1.1 is better adapted to both the upper and lower human respiratory tract epithelium than B3.13.