Name:Sahar A Alsaidi, Gearoff Cruz Rodriguez and Nadjet Cornejal
Mentor Name:Jose Fernandez Romero
Abstract:Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is still a major global public health issue. The search continues for new and better strategies to prevent and/or treat the infection. Anti-HIV neutralizing agents have gained momentum after newly discovered broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs). We explored the antiviral activity of two new broadly neutralizing immunoglobulins (hIgG1-A and hIgG1-B). We transfected 293T cells with ten different full-length Transmitted/Founder (T/F) HIV-1 infectious molecular clones (clades B and C) using Lipofectamine 2000. The HIV-1 T/F viruses were harvested from the 293T cells supernatant 72 hours after transfection and tittered using the TZM-bl assay. The XTT assay was used to test cytotoxicity (CC50, half-maximal toxic concentration) and the TZM-bl assay was used to determine antiviral activity (EC50, half-maximal inhibitory concentration) of bNAbs against the HIV-1 T/F viruses. CC50 and EC50 values were calculated using a dose “response“inhibition analysis on GraphPad Prism v8.3.1 software. Our results show that the hIgG1-A is more potent than hIgG1-B (mean EC50 of 0.43 nM versus 2nM) although with similar broad spectrum (9 out of 10 HIV-1 T/F viruses were inhibited). Our bNAbs show broad-spectrum anti-HIV activity and additional preclinical studies need to explore the potential of these molecules to prevent/treat HIV infection.
