EBioMedicine (Jan 2018)

Transcriptomics and Targeted Proteomics Analysis to Gain Insights Into the Immune-control Mechanisms of HIV-1 Infected Elite Controllers

  • Wang Zhang,
  • Anoop T. Ambikan,
  • Maike Sperk,
  • Robert van Domselaar,
  • Piotr Nowak,
  • Kajsa Noyan,
  • Aman Russom,
  • Anders Sönnerborg,
  • Ujjwal Neogi

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ebiom.2017.11.031
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 27, no. C
pp. 40 – 50

Abstract

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A small subset of HIV-1 infected individuals, the “Elite Controllers” (EC), can control viral replication and restrain progression to immunodeficiency without antiretroviral therapy (ART). In this study, a cross-sectional transcriptomics and targeted proteomics analysis were performed in a well-defined Swedish cohort of untreated EC (n = 19), treatment naïve patients with viremia (VP, n = 32) and HIV-1-negative healthy controls (HC, n = 23). The blood transcriptome identified 151 protein-coding genes that were differentially expressed (DE) in VP compared to EC. Genes like CXCR6 and SIGLEC1 were downregulated in EC compared to VP. A definite distinction in gene expression between males and females among all patient-groups were observed. The gene expression profile between female EC and the healthy females was similar but did differ between male EC and healthy males. At targeted proteomics analysis, 90% (29/32) of VPs clustered together while EC and HC clustered separately from VP. Among the soluble factors, 33 were distinctive to be statistically significant (False discovery rate = 0.02). Cell surface receptor signaling pathway, programmed cell death, response to cytokine and cytokine-mediated signaling seem to synergistically play an essential role in HIV-1 control in EC.

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