Targeting the HIV-1 “silent face”

The human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) is an enveloped retrovirus that destroys cells in the immune system and AIDS. With at least 40 million people currently infected worldwide, and millions of new infections occurring each year, HIV-1 remains an important threat to global public health as there is no vaccine and no cure. In the last decade, it was discovered that a subset of HIV-1–infected individuals produce potent and broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs), which can protect against and suppress infection in animal models and exhibit antiviral activity in humans against several circulating viral clades. Recently, we isolated and characterized a new class of donor-derived antibody (Silent Face (SF) bNAbs) that have the potential to overcome challenges associated with bNAb development. Active projects in our lab are focused on i) isolation of antibodies from HIV-1 infected donors that target the silent face epitope to better define features of this bNAb class, and ii) the design of priming and boosting Env immunogens to elicit silent face bNAbs in a vaccine.