PLOS ONE. 2011; 6(7):e22010.

PubMed ID: 21799765

Vaccination against heterologous R5 clade C SHIV: Prevention of infection and correlates of protection

Lakhashe SK, Wang W, Siddappa NB, Hemashettar G, Polacino P, Hu SL, Villinger F, Else JG, Novembre FJ, Yoon JK, Lee SJ, Montefiori DC, Ruprecht RM, Rasmussen RA

A safe, efficacious vaccine is required to stop the AIDS pandemic. Disappointing results from the STEP trial implied a need to include humoral anti-HIV-1 responses, a notion supported by RV144 trial data even though correlates of protection are unknown. We vaccinated rhesus macaques with recombinant simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) Gag-Pol particles, HIV-1 Tat and trimeric clade C (HIV-C) gp160, which induced cross-neutralizing antibodies (nAbs) and robust cellular immune responses. After five low-dose mucosal challenges with a simian-human immunodeficiency virus (SHIV) that encoded a heterologous R5 HIV-C envelope (22.1% divergence from the gp160 immunogen), 94% of controls became viremic, whereas one third of vaccinees remained virus-free. Upon high-dose SHIV rechallenge, all controls became infected, whereas some vaccinees remained aviremic. Peak viremia was inversely correlated with both cellular immunity (p<0.001) and cross-nAb titers (p<0.001). These data simultaneously linked cellular as well as humoral immune responses with the degree of protection for the first time.