Guiding the humoral response against HIV-1 toward a MPER adjacent region by immunization with a VLP-formulated antibody-selected envelope variant.

ABSTRACT: Preventive HIV-1 vaccine strategies rely on the elicitation of broadly neutralizing antibody (bNAb) responses, but their induction in vivo by vaccination remains challenging. Considering that the ability of an epitope to elicit effective humoral immunity depends on its exposure on the virion, we have used a reverse genetics approach to select variants from an HIV-1 AC10_29 randomly mutated envelope library that showed increased affinity for a selected bNAb (4E10 bNAb targeting the HIV-1 MPER region). Isolated envelope sequences were analyzed by deep-sequencing showing a small number of dominant changes, including the loss of four potential N-linked glycosylation sites and disruption of the V1/V2 loop. Accordingly, the dominant variant (LR1-C1), showed not only increased affinity for MPER b

SUBMITTER: Beltran-Pavez C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6300218 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature