Monoclonal antibodies show promise for AIDS vaccines.

2004 MAR 3 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Monoclonal antibodies show promise for AIDS vaccines.

According to a study from the United States, "Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) is phylogenetically classified into groups and clades (or subtypes). Human neutralizing monoclonal antibodies (nMAbs), originally isolated from individuals infected with HIV-1 group M-clade B, neutralized not only primary HIV-1 clade B isolates in vitro but also primary isolates of other group M clades (A, C, D, E, and F). This corrected the previously held notion that primary HIV-1 isolates are resistant to neutralizing antibodies."

"Here we show that anti-HIV-1 group M-clade B nMAbs potently neutralized primary isolates of the phylogenetically distant HIV-1 group O," reported Flavia Ferrantelli at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in the U.S. and collaborators in the U.S. and Austria. "We and others have previously shown that passive immunization with human nMAbs protected adult or neonatal primates against infection with simian-human immunodeficiency virus strains encoding HIV-1 group M-clade B envelope genes. The in vitro cross-group neutralization shown here underscores the broad ...