Neutralizing Antibodies and Vaccine Development against the HIV-1 Virus

A special issue of Vaccines (ISSN 2076-393X). This special issue belongs to the section "HIV Vaccines".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 May 2024 | Viewed by 1273

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Oregon National Primate Research Center, Oregon Health & Science University, Beaverton, OR 97006, USA
Interests: neutralizing antibodies against HIV-1; HIV-1 vaccine development; immunotherapy strategies with neutralizing antibodies; prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV-1; development of neutralizing antibodies in HIV-1 infection; monoclonal antibody cloning and characterization

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Guest Editor
Vaccine Research Center, NIAID, National Institute of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA
Interests: HIV-1 bnAbs; strategies for HIV-1 bnAbs development; challenges in HIV-1 vaccine development; HIV-1 and its complex mechanisms of immune evasion

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Guest Editor
School of Biological Sciences and Nebraska Center for Virology, University of Nebraska—Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, USA
Interests: HIV-1 pathogenesis; HIV-1 vaccine
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

HIV-1 is the etiological agent of AIDS in humans. As of 2022, 39 million people are living with HIV. Despite decades of research, the development of a potent HIV-1 vaccine still remains a challenge due to factors such as evolving virus genetic diversity, immune evasion and integration into the host genome, resulting in the virus becoming resistant to host immunity and treatments. Despite these obstacles, there is still an urgent need for the development of an effective HIV-1 vaccine.

This Special Issue is intended to cover all the past and ongoing efforts in the development of an HIV-1 vaccine that uses broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs) against the HIV-1 virus. This is an attempt to compile up-to-date information regarding HIV-1 vaccine development and its related challenges. In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

  • HIV-1 bnAbs;
  • Strategies for HIV-1 bnAbs development;
  • Challenges in HIV-1 vaccine development;
  • HIV-1 and its complex mechanisms of immune evasion.

We invite authors to contribute a research article or review for the Special Issue “Neutralizing Antibodies and Vaccines Development against the HIV-1 Virusin Vaccines (ISSN: 2076-393X, impact factor 7.8).

Dr. Ann Hessell
Dr. Pooja Khatkar
Dr. Qingsheng Li
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Vaccines is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • HIV-1
  • vaccine
  • broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs)
  • Neutralization assay
  • ELISA
  • microneutralization assay
  • surrogate assay
  • viral infectivity assay

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

16 pages, 2879 KiB  
Article
The Association of HIV-1 Neutralization in Aviremic Children and Adults with Time to ART Initiation and CD4+/CD8+ Ratios
by Victor Sanchez-Merino, Miguel Martin-Serrano, Manuela Beltran, Beatriz Lazaro-Martin, Eloisa Cervantes, Manuel Oltra, Talia Sainz, Felipe Garcia, Maria Luisa Navarro and Eloisa Yuste
Vaccines 2024, 12(1), 8; https://doi.org/10.3390/vaccines12010008 - 20 Dec 2023
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Abstract
Broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs) bind and neutralize diverse HIV isolates and demonstrate protective effects in primate models and humans against specific isolates. To develop an effective HIV vaccine, it is widely believed that inducing these antibodies is crucial. However, the high somatic hypermutation [...] Read more.
Broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs) bind and neutralize diverse HIV isolates and demonstrate protective effects in primate models and humans against specific isolates. To develop an effective HIV vaccine, it is widely believed that inducing these antibodies is crucial. However, the high somatic hypermutation in bnAbs and the limited affinity of HIV Env proteins for bnAb germline precursors suggest that extended antigen exposure is necessary for their production. Consequently, HIV vaccine research is exploring complex sequential vaccination strategies to guide the immune response through maturation stages. In this context, the exploration of the factors linked to the generation of these antibodies across diverse age groups becomes critical. In this study, we assessed the anti-HIV-1 neutralization potency and breadth in 108 aviremic adults and 109 aviremic children under 15 years of age who were receiving ART. We used a previously described minipanel of recombinant viruses and investigated the factors associated with neutralization in these individuals. We identified individuals in both groups who were capable of neutralizing viruses from three different subtypes, with greater cross-neutralization observed in the adult group (49.0% vs. 9.2%). In both groups, we observed an inverse association between neutralization breadth and the CD4+/CD8+ ratio, as well as a direct association with the time to ART initiation. However, we found no association with time post-infection, cumulative ART duration, or CD8+ cell levels. The present study demonstrates that children receiving antiretroviral therapy generate broadly neutralizing responses to HIV-1, albeit with lower magnitude compared to adults. We also observed that neutralization breadth is associated with CD4+/CD8+ levels and time to treatment initiation in both children and adults living with HIV-1. Our interpretation of these results is that a delay in ART initiation could have prolonged the antigenic stimulation associated with viral replication and thus facilitate the capacity to elicit long-lasting broadly neutralizing responses. These results corroborate prior findings that show that HIV-1-neutralizing responses can persist for years, even at low antigen levels, implying an HIV-1 vaccine may induce lasting neutralizing antibody response. Full article
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