After a final wash step to remove all unbound antibodies and shed gp120, viral infectivity was assessed on TZM-bl cells
After a final wash step to remove all unbound antibodies and shed gp120, viral infectivity was assessed on TZM-bl cells. patients infected with divergent genetic HIV-1 subtypes. Importantly, as we show in this study, induction of gp120 shedding is usually closely associated with MPER antibody inhibition, constituting either a primary event leading to virion neutralization or representing an immediate consequence thereof, and thus needs to be factored into the mechanistic processes underlying their activity. Neutralization of HIV by antibodies is generally attributed to antibody occupancy of the envelope trimers and interference with viral attachment to host cell receptors or access, but the precise underlying molecular mechanisms leading to neutralization by most neutralizing antibodies recognized to date await clarification (Zwick and Burton, 2007). A considerable Mirodenafil dihydrochloride effort in the development of HIV vaccines has been directed Mirodenafil dihydrochloride toward eliciting neutralizing antibody responses that mimic activities of the membrane-proximal external region (MPER)Cspecific mAbs 2F5 and 4E10. Information around the structural composition of the MPER has broadened in recent years, and studies of epitope Rabbit Polyclonal to Cytochrome P450 2A7 convenience have highlighted the possibility that neutralization by MPER-specific antibodies may require the acknowledgement of their epitopes in the context of membrane lipids (Cardoso et al., 2007; Montero et al., 2008; Alam et al., 2009) and may depend on the formation of the prehairpin intermediate state during viral access (Frey et al., 2008, 2010; Alam et al., 2009). Whether these antibodies can take action on free computer virus in the absence of target cells and receptor engagement remains uncertain, and thus the precise windows of action of these antibodies, their modes of epitope acknowledgement, and a detailed mechanism of neutralization still await further definition. Our understanding of the biochemical activity and biological function of neutralizing antibodies is usually shaped by studies that have assessed the initial conversation between antibodies and HIV and their capacity to block computer virus entry in relatively short-term experimental settings but have left the fate of neutralized virions largely unexplored. HIV neutralization is commonly assessed under conditions that do not allow discrimination between actions of the neutralizing antibody around the free computer virus and actions after receptor engagement, as antibody is usually present throughout all actions, including preincubation and infection. In this study, we specifically investigated the actions of MPER mAbs on virions in the absence of target cell interactions to determine whether and to what extent this type of antibody can contribute to clearance of computer virus particles in vivo. Whether neutralization causes an irreversible deactivation of HIV or whether virions can regain activity after antibody dissociation may also significantly impact the in vivo efficacy of a given antibody. In vivo virions can persist for extended periods of time before encountering appropriate target cells or being cleared by phagocytes. The sequestration of HIV by DCs is usually well documented in this respect. Trapped by DCs, the computer virus can remain infectious for several days and efficiently be transferred to CD4+ T cells (Turville et al., 2004; Yu et al., 2008). Should neutralization be reversible, trafficking of antibody-opsonized computer virus to intracellular compartments or anatomical sites with lower antibody concentration could potentially lead to antibody dissociation and reconstitute the viruss infectivity. Achieving irreversible neutralization is usually thus clearly desired for both natural and vaccine-elicited immune responses. In this study, we aimed to obtain insight into the long-term effect of broadly neutralizing antibodies on cell-free HIV particles and their capacity to irreversibly inactivate the computer virus. Most notably, the MPER-specific antibodies potently induced gp120 shedding upon prolonged contact with the computer virus, rendering neutralization irreversible. The kinetic and thermodynamic requirements of the shedding process were virtually identical to those of neutralization, identifying gp120 shedding as a key process associated Mirodenafil dihydrochloride with HIV neutralization by MPER antibodies. RESULTS AND Conversation Kinetics of HIV neutralization To study the effects of long-term conversation of HIV with neutralizing antibodies, we compared short- (1 h) and long-term (overnight; 16C18 h) inhibitory activity of the neutralizing antibodies b12 (gp120 CD4 binding site [CD4bs] specific; Barbas et al., 1992), 2G12 (gp120 carbohydrate specific; Trkola et al., 1996), and the gp41 MPERCspecific antibodies 2F5 (Muster et al., 1993) and 4E10 (Stiegler et al., 2001; Zwick et al., 2001) against a panel of envelope-pseudotyped luciferase reporter viruses (Fig. 1 A Mirodenafil dihydrochloride and Table S1). Although long-term coincubation of computer virus with mAb 2G12 showed no or only modest increases in neutralization, prolonged coincubation markedly improved the neutralizing capacity of 2F5, 4E10, and.