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Volume 9 Supplement 2

AIDS Vaccine 2012

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Heterologous neutralization breadth persists despite B-lymphocyte dysfunction in chronic HIV-1 infection

Background

Of the millions globally infected with HIV-1, only 20-30% will develop broadly neutralizing antibodies. To date, no one has measured this phenomenon in a cohort of subjects for which multiple aspects of B-lymphocyte dysfunction have been evaluated in parallel.

Methods

In 16 viremic seroconverters, the cross-clade neutralizing activity of plasma was investigated using a panel of thirteen clade A, B, and C HIV-1 envelope (Env) pseudotyped virions, which represented three tiers of sensitivity. The neutralization IC50 was calculated for each plasma-Env combination, and these data were used to determine a breadth (how many Envs were neutralized) and potency (the strength of neutralization) score for each seroconverter. Additionally, the level of plasma antibodies that bound to the monomeric form of a subtype B Env gp120 (HIV-1 BaL) was quantitated.

Results

A range of neutralization breadth emerged: three plasma samples (19%) demonstrated widespread neutralizing activity against this panel of Envs, while five subjects (31%) exhibited a complete lack of detectable neutralization at the lowest dilution of plasma tested (1:100). No correlation was observed between neutralization breadth or potency and parameters of B-lymphocyte dysfunction (PD-1, BTLA), immune activation (Ki-67, CD95), or disease progression (CD4 T cell count, plasma viral load). The level of total IgG in each plasma sample, however, did significantly correlate with both neutralization breadth and potency. Like total IgG, anti-gp120 binding antibodies also positively correlated, but, in this case, the correlations only trended toward significance. Anti-gp120 binding antibodies did not correlate with parameters of B-lymphocyte dysfunction, immune activation, disease progression, or total IgG level.

Conclusion

These findings demonstrate that even in chronically HIV-1-infected subjects in whom B-lymphocytes display multiple indications of dysfunction, antibodies that mediate cross-clade neutralization breadth (particularly anti-gp120 binding and other IgG antibody specificities) continue to circulate in plasma.

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This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Murphy, M., Boliar, S., Tran, T. et al. Heterologous neutralization breadth persists despite B-lymphocyte dysfunction in chronic HIV-1 infection. Retrovirology 9 (Suppl 2), P103 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1186/1742-4690-9-S2-P103

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1742-4690-9-S2-P103

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