Research Highlight
Published: 17 June 2024
RNA vaccines
Iris Marchal 1
Nature Biotechnology
volume 42, page 847 (2024)Cite this article
An effective HIV vaccine must induce broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs) that target the most conserved sites of the HIV envelope, a feat that has not yet been achieved in humans. Germline-targeting vaccine design holds promise by using immunogens to prime naive B cells for bnAb precursor activation and then boosting their maturation. A major challenge for this approach is that antibody–antigen recognition depends on a long heavy chain complementarity determining region 3 (HCDR3) loop on naive B cells, which is present at very low frequencies. Two papers in Science describe an immunization strategy that effectively primes and boosts maturation of B cell precursors to produce the HCDR3-dominant bnAb BG18.
In the first study, Steichen et al. used the priming immunogen N332-GT5 to target BG18 precursors in rhesus macaques. Immunization with N332-GT5 and adjuvant saponin/MPLA nanoparticles reliably induced diverse BG18-class precursors in all eight animals. Structural analysis confirmed the binding of antibodies with BG18-class HCDR3s to HIV trimer glycoproteins, similar to BG18.
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Nature Biotechnology https://www.nature.com/nbt/
Iris Marchal
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Cite this article
Marchal, I. A vaccine strategy for inducing broadly neutralizing antibodies against HIV.
Nat Biotechnol 42, 847 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-024-02289-x
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Published: 17 June 2024
Issue Date: June 2024
DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-024-02289-x
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