  The pure spinor formulation of superstring theory includes an interacting
sector of central charge $c_{\lambda}=22$, which can be realized as a curved
$\beta\gamma$ system on the cone over the orthogonal Grassmannian
$\text{OG}^{+}(5,10)$. We find that the spectrum of the $\beta\gamma$ system
organizes into representations of the $\mathfrak{g}=\mathfrak{e}_6$ affine
algebra at level $-3$, whose $\mathfrak{so}(10)_{-3}\oplus {\mathfrak
u}(1)_{-4}$ subalgebra encodes the rotational and ghost symmetries of the
system. As a consequence, the pure spinor partition function decomposes as a
sum of affine $\mathfrak{e}_6$ characters. We interpret this as an instance of
a more general pattern of enhancements in curved $\beta\gamma$ systems, which
also includes the cases $\mathfrak{g}=\mathfrak{so}(8)$ and $\mathfrak{e}_7$,
corresponding to target spaces that are cones over the complex Grassmannian
$\text{Gr}(2,4)$ and the complex Cayley plane $\mathbb{OP}^2$. We identify
these curved $\beta\gamma$ systems with the chiral algebras of certain $2d$
$(0,2)$ CFTs arising from twisted compactification of 4d $\mathcal{N}=2$ SCFTs
on $S^2$.
