Murine Monoclonal Antibodies for Antigenic Discrimination of HIV-1 Envelope Proteins

Harnessing Natural Mosaics: Antibody-Instructed, Multi-Envelope HIV-1 Vaccine Design

The year 2021 marks the 40th anniversary since physicians recognized symptoms of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a disease that has since caused more than 30 million deaths worldwide. Despite the passing of four decades, there remains no licensed vaccine for the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1), the etiologic agent of AIDS. Despite the development of outstanding anti-retroviral drugs, there are currently more than one-half million deaths each year due to AIDS. Here, we revisit a conventional vaccine strategy used for protection against variable pathogens like HIV-1, which combines an array of diverse surface antigens. The strategy uses antibody recognition patterns to categorize viruses and their surface antigens into groups. Then a leader is assigned for each group and group leaders are formulated into vaccine cocktails. The group leaders are ‘natural mosaics’, because they share one or more epitope(s) with each of the other group members. We encourage the application of this conventional approach to HIV-1 vaccine design. We suggest that the partnering of an antibody-instructed envelope cocktail with new vaccine vectors will yield a successful vaccine in the HIV-1 field.

How Basic Immunological Principles May Instruct the Design of a Successful HIV-Type 1 Vaccine

This article is dedicated to Dr. Peter Doherty. While Peter continues to make groundbreaking discoveries in the field of immunology, he also provides outstanding scientific mentorship to his trainees. Here we contemplate our past training with Peter, Peter's teachings of basic immunological principles, and how basic principles may instruct the design of a successful human immunodeficiency virus-type 1 vaccine.

Multi-Envelope HIV-1 Vaccine Development: Two Targeted Immune Pathways, One Desired Protective Outcome

In 2016, there were more than 30 million individuals living with HIV-1, ∼1.8 million new HIV-1 infections, and ∼1 million HIV-1-related deaths according to UNAIDS ( unaids.org ). Hence, a preventive HIV-1 vaccine remains a global priority. The variant envelopes of HIV-1 present a significant obstacle to vaccine development and the vaccine field has realized that immunization with a single HIV-1 envelope protein will not be sufficient to generate broadly neutralizing antibodies. Here we describe two nonmutually exclusive, targeted pathways with which a multi-envelope HIV-1 vaccine may generate protective immune responses against variant HIV-1. Pathways include (i) the induction of a polyclonal immune response, comprising a plethora of antibodies with subset-reactive and cross-reactive specificities, together able to neutralize diverse HIV-1 (termed Poly-nAb in this report) and (ii) the induction of one or a few monoclonal antibodies, each with a broadly neutralizing specificity (bnAb). With each pathway in mind, we describe challenges and strategies that may ultimately support HIV-1 vaccine success.