Seventeen HIV Antibodies Released to Provide New Targets for Vaccines

According to the report of the American Physicist Organization Network on August 17, recently, a joint research group composed of a number of research institutions such as the Scripps Research Institute of the United States, Theraclone Science of Biotechnology, Monogram Biosciences, and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative ( In collaboration with IAVI, 17 new antibodies that can widely neutralize HIV variants were isolated, providing a new target for the design of candidate vaccines. Research papers were published in the recently published Nature magazine.

Neutralizing antibodies are a class of soluble proteins produced by the exposure of acquired immune cells in the blood to viruses. In the blood, they can bind to the virus, preventing it from further infecting human cells, and can cause the virus particles to lyse, causing a "neutralization" reaction. Because neutralizing antibodies can "eliminate" a virus before it infects human cells, if such antibodies are present before human exposure to HIV, infection can be prevented.

These 17 new potent broad-spectrum neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs) were isolated from the blood of four HIV-positive patients. Some of them can bind to unknown molecular structures or epitopes on the surface of HIV, which means that In the case of vaccines, the number of alternative targets is greatly increased; and some of these antibodies are 10 to 100 times more potent than the previously developed antibodies in preventing HIV infection.

Only a few HIV-positive patients can produce potent and broad-spectrum neutralizing antibodies after several years of HIV infection. Animal experiments show that if a prophylactic vaccine can elicit these antibodies, it can prevent HIV infection. In 2009, the team had isolated three potent neutralizing antibodies including PG9 and PG16, and published related papers in the journal Science. PG9 and PG16 are the first potent HIV broad-spectrum antibodies discovered by scientists that bind to a specific epitope of a glycoprotein (gp120) in HIV-1 and prevent HIV-1 from infecting human cells. Subsequently, the U.S. National Institutes of Health Vaccine Research Center also isolated a group of potent neutralizing antibodies using completely different methods.

"Most antiviral vaccines rely on activation of antibody responses to produce effects. HIV has strong variability. To be effective, anti-HIV vaccines must trigger the production of potent neutralizing antibodies. Analyze the structural and biochemical properties of these antibodies." It helps to reveal the mechanism by which the remaining HIV binds to form an immunogen. The immunogen is the active ingredient of the vaccine.” Dennis Burton, Professor of Immunology and Microbiology, Director of IAVI Neutralizing Antibody Center, Scripps Research Institute Explain that these new antibodies are of great value in the study of AIDS vaccines.

The researchers also pointed out that the key to designing a vaccine candidate for AIDS is the effective use of antibody responses. In order for AIDS vaccines to provide comprehensive protection, they must be able to generate correspondingly potent neutralizing antibodies. The discovery of new antibodies also heralds the future trend of AIDS vaccine design and how to maximize the effectiveness of vaccines.