About the Authors

Daniel Harari

daniel@harari@weizmann.ac.il (DH); gideon.schreiber@weizmann.ac.il (GS)

Affiliation Department of Biological Chemistry, The Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel

Renne Abramovich

Affiliation Department of Biological Chemistry, The Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel

Alla Zozulya

Contributed equally to this work with: Alla Zozulya, Paul Smith, Sandrine Pouly

Affiliation MS Platform, Merck-Serono, (a division of Merck KGaA), Geneva, Switzerland

Paul Smith

Contributed equally to this work with: Alla Zozulya, Paul Smith, Sandrine Pouly

Affiliation MS Platform, Merck-Serono, (a division of Merck KGaA), Geneva, Switzerland

Sandrine Pouly

Contributed equally to this work with: Alla Zozulya, Paul Smith, Sandrine Pouly

Affiliation MS Platform, Merck-Serono, (a division of Merck KGaA), Geneva, Switzerland

Mario Köster

Affiliation Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research, Dept. Gene Regulation and Differentiation, Braunschweig, Germany

Hansjörg Hauser

Affiliation Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research, Dept. Gene Regulation and Differentiation, Braunschweig, Germany

Gideon Schreiber

daniel@harari@weizmann.ac.il (DH); gideon.schreiber@weizmann.ac.il (GS)

Affiliation Department of Biological Chemistry, The Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel

Competing Interests

A number of the authors of this manuscript are/were employed by Merck-Serono. Research performed was funded by Merck-KGaA (the parental company of Merck-Serono). Additionally, the authors declare that the disclosed patented technologies relating to IFN superagonists are associated with patent filings: USA: 60/694,810 and PCT/IL2006/000754 (along with downstream national filings). The authors will openly share their reagents described in this paper with academic institutions. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: DH SP GS. Performed the experiments: DH RA. Analyzed the data: DH GS. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: MK HH. Wrote the paper: DH AZ PS SP GS.