Doherty Institute - Theses
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ItemStrategies for the elicitation of broadly neutralising antibodies to the HIV-1 envelope protein( 2017)An effective prophylactic vaccine for HIV will likely require the elicitation of neutralising antibodies directed towards the Envelope protein (Env) of HIV. In particular, broadly neutralising antibodies (bNAbs) capable of mediating neutralisation against a wide variety of HIV strains would be desirable. bNAbs frequently contain a large degree of affinity maturation, required for the development of their neutralisation breadth, thus the induction of affinity maturation during vaccination may be crucial for the elicitation of bNAbs. This thesis aimed to investigate strategies to enhance bNAb elicitation, in particular, to enhance the affinity maturation of anti-Env antibodies. This was attempted by immune targeting of Env to Clec9A and CR2, which have previously been shown to enhance affinity maturation. Targeting to CR2 was achieved by fusing Env to its ligand, C3d, although this was found to be ineffective at enhancing immunogenicity with the soluble protein constructs assessed. Targeting Clec9A was initially investigated using an anti-Clec9A scFv fused to Env, however when this was found to be unable to bind cell-surface Clec9A, the targeting domain was re-engineered as an anti-Clec9A scFab. While cell-surface Clec9A targeting was achieved successfully, this did not alter the parameters of Env immunogenicity measured. This may have been impacted by the immunodominance of the targeting domains, which future studies will need to address. The conserved epitopes of bNAbs are often poorly exposed, and this contributes to the difficulty in eliciting antibodies against these sites, which are often outcompeted by higher affinity interactions directed towards variable regions of Env. Therefore a novel mutation, ΔN, was investigated for its ability to enhance the exposure of bNAb epitopes in soluble Env constructs. The introduction of the ΔN mutation into SOSIP constructs of the AD8 Env strain enhanced the exposure of the epitopes for multiple bNAb specificities. An immunogenicity study in guinea pigs revealed that AD8 ΔN SOSIP elicited significantly higher titres of antibodies able to block the binding of bNAbs whose epitope exposure was enhanced in this protein. By contrast, ΔN-mediated epitope enhancement and preferential bNAb-like antibody elicitation was not observed with a BG505 strain SOSIP immunogen. Thus, the redirection of the immune response to produce bNAb-like specificities by ΔN appears to correlate with its ability to enhance bNAb epitope exposure in the SOSIP immunogen. The majority of bNAbs are extensively mutated such that most Env strains cannot bind to their precursor antibodies, thus identification of Env immunogens able to bind bNAb precursors is required. A panel of Envs isolated early during infection were screened for interaction with multiple bNAb precursors. This screen identified an Env strain, SC45, able to mediate low binding of the precursors of multiple bNAbs when it is expressed in a membrane-bound form. Expression of soluble SOSIP SC45 abrogates the binding to bNAb precursors, however this protein displays favourable biophysical characteristics desirable in a vaccine immunogen. The introduction of the ΔN mutation into SC45 SOSIP results in a large enhancement in PGT121 epitope exposure, and SC45 SOSIP ΔN is, therefore, a highly promising vaccine candidate.