iScience (Feb 2021)

Anti-V2 antibodies virus vulnerability revealed by envelope V1 deletion in HIV vaccine candidates

  • Isabela Silva de Castro,
  • Giacomo Gorini,
  • Rosemarie Mason,
  • Jason Gorman,
  • Massimiliano Bissa,
  • Mohammad A. Rahman,
  • Anush Arakelyan,
  • Irene Kalisz,
  • Stephen Whitney,
  • Manuel Becerra-Flores,
  • Eric Ni,
  • Kristina Peachman,
  • Hung V. Trinh,
  • Michael Read,
  • Mei-Hue Liu,
  • Donald Van Ryk,
  • Dominic Paquin-Proulx,
  • Zhanna Shubin,
  • Marina Tuyishime,
  • Jennifer Peele,
  • Mohammed S. Ahmadi,
  • Raffaello Verardi,
  • Juliane Hill,
  • Margaret Beddall,
  • Richard Nguyen,
  • James D. Stamos,
  • Dai Fujikawa,
  • Susie Min,
  • Luca Schifanella,
  • Monica Vaccari,
  • Veronica Galli,
  • Melvin N. Doster,
  • Namal P.M. Liyanage,
  • Sarkis Sarkis,
  • Francesca Caccuri,
  • Celia LaBranche,
  • David C. Montefiori,
  • Georgia D. Tomaras,
  • Xiaoying Shen,
  • Margherita Rosati,
  • Barbara K. Felber,
  • George N. Pavlakis,
  • David J. Venzon,
  • William Magnanelli,
  • Matthew Breed,
  • Josh Kramer,
  • Brandon F. Keele,
  • Michael A. Eller,
  • Claudia Cicala,
  • James Arthos,
  • Guido Ferrari,
  • Leonid Margolis,
  • Marjorie Robert-Guroff,
  • Peter D. Kwong,
  • Mario Roederer,
  • Mangala Rao,
  • Timothy J. Cardozo,
  • Genoveffa Franchini

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 24, no. 2
p. 102047

Abstract

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Summary: The efficacy of ALVAC-based HIV and SIV vaccines in humans and macaques correlates with antibodies to envelope variable region 2 (V2). We show here that vaccine-induced antibodies to SIV variable region 1 (V1) inhibit anti-V2 antibody-mediated cytotoxicity and reverse their ability to block V2 peptide interaction with the α4β7 integrin. SIV vaccines engineered to delete V1 and favor an α helix, rather than a β sheet V2 conformation, induced V2-specific ADCC correlating with decreased risk of SIV acquisition. Removal of V1 from the HIV-1 clade A/E A244 envelope resulted in decreased binding to antibodies recognizing V2 in the β sheet conformation. Thus, deletion of V1 in HIV envelope immunogens may improve antibody responses to V2 virus vulnerability sites and increase the efficacy of HIV vaccine candidates.

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