Applying antibody-sensitive hypervariable region 1-deleted hepatitis C virus to the study of escape pathways of neutralizing human monoclonal antibody AR5A.

ABSTRACT: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a major cause of end-stage liver diseases. With 3-4 million new HCV infections yearly, a vaccine is urgently needed. A better understanding of virus escape from neutralizing antibodies and their corresponding epitopes are important for this effort. However, for viral isolates with high antibody resistance, or antibodies with moderate potency, it remains challenging to induce escape mutations in vitro. Here, as proof-of-concept, we used antibody-sensitive HVR1-deleted (ΔHVR1) viruses to generate escape mutants for a human monoclonal antibody, AR5A, targeting a rare cross-genotype conserved epitope. By analyzing the genotype 1a envelope proteins (E1/E2) of recovered Core-NS2 recombinant H77/JFH1ΔHVR1 and performing reverse genetic studies we found that resistance t

SUBMITTER: Velazquez-Moctezuma R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5358973 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature