Collective action against HIV

US researchers have managed to isolate the memory B cells responsible for controlling neutralizing antibodies against HIV infection.

The B cells were isolated from six HIV+ patients who are ‘elite controllers’ – people with very low viral loads and high titres of neutralizing antibodies who seem to be able to fend off disease progression.

The researchers, led by doctoral student Johannes Scheid at Rockefeller University in the US, cloned 502 antibodies from memory B cells, most of which target HIV’s envelope protein.

They found 50 antibodies specific to gp140, the protein on the envelope of the virus that HIV uses to infect immune cells.

They also found a new epitope in the same region of gp120 as the CD4-binding site.

Having purified these antibodies, they found that while they could neutralize on an individual level, as a collective they could fend off many different viral strains.

Study senior author Michel Nussenzweig said in a statement that the next step will be to find out which mixtures of antibodies are most effective in pursuit of a new vaccine design strategy.

The study is published online in advance of publication in Nature.