Respiratory viral infections remain a significant global health burden, requiring interventions that establish robust defense directly at the portal of entry. Intranasal delivery of engineered IgM antibodies represents a highly potent platform for achieving mucosal protection. In this review, we evaluate the structural and functional rationale for prioritizing engineered IgM antibodies for mucosal immunity, provide preclinical evidence of their efficacy against respiratory viruses, and critically analyze the biomanufacturing and formulation strategies necessary for clinical translation. While bivalent antibodies are highly susceptible to viral mutational escape, the avidity-driven affinity enhancement provided by IgM scaffolds enables superior cross-linking of virions. This effectively immobilizes antigenically drifted variants and facilitates rapid mucociliary clearance, demonstrating superior efficacy against respiratory pathogens compared to their parental IgG isotypes. Concurrently, emerging biomanufacturing, purification, and formulation strategies are successfully overcoming historical stability and production hurdles to enable clinical translation. By addressing these translational challenges, this review provides a comprehensive roadmap for developing engineered IgM into a robust, variant-agnostic mucosal defense strategy against emerging and reemerging respiratory threats.

Fungal genomics is becoming one of the focal interests within the Chinese mycological community and advances in genomics will, no doubt, accelerate the pace of mycological research in China. Simultaneously, the challenge will be how to capture the full potential of genomics by maximizing and prioritizing the resources within the Chinese mycological community. The 2009 China Fungal Genome Initiative Symposium in Shanghai examined the status of China's fungal genome research and, for the first time, focused attention in the extent, range and quality of fungal genomics in China. This whitepaper is the result. Following this whitepaper, a series of recommendations and actions will be put in motion within the coming months and years to coordinate the various genome projects, ranging from selection of fungi for sequencing, to the development of a bioinformatics infrastructure, and accompanying research ideas, funding and commercialization.