2023-08-01 13:58:16
August 01, 2023
Researchers from the Institut Pasteur, Inserm and AP-HP have just shed light on the role of neutralizing antibodies in controlling HIV. A discovery that opens the way to new therapeutic approaches. Explanations.
They are called “HIV controllers”. These rare patients with HIV-1 have received early antiretroviral treatment for several years. Then, without treatment, these patients are able to naturally control the virus over the long term. Since this discovery, researchers have been trying to understand the immune defense mechanisms in place in these patients. Objective: to use these mechanisms to develop a vaccine or new therapeutic strategies.
In a study published on July 10, 2023 in the journal Cell Host & Microbe, researchers from the Institut Pasteur, in collaboration with Inserm and AP-HP, identified broad-spectrum neutralizing antibodies in a patient controller that were probably involved in the remission of this patient. ” Our study has identified for the first time a family of broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs), of which the antibody EPTC112, which targets the envelope protein of HIV-1, is one of the representatives. the most active of this family, explains Hugo Mouquet, director of the Humoral Immunology Unit at the Institut Pasteur, in a press release from the AP-HP.
A clinical trial by the end of the year
In vitro, this antibody was able to neutralize a third of the 200 HIV-1 variants tested. He “is able to induce the elimination of infected cells in the presence of Natural Killer cells (NK), immune cells responsible for eliminating abnormal cells from the body”.
These new therapeutic avenues, involving broad-spectrum neutralizing antibodies, should be tested during a clinical trial initiated in France before the end of 2023. This will involve“to study the combination of an antiretroviral treatment in primary infection with two HIV-1 neutralizing antibodies once morest placebo in order to determine whether these antibodies can contribute to establishing viral remission following stopping antiretrovirals”.
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Source : Institut Pasteur, April 12, 2022 – APHP, July 27, 2023 – Cell Host & Microbe, July 10, 2023
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Written by : Dorothée Duchemin – Edited by Emmanuel Ducreuzet
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