TY - JOUR
T1 - Cleavage-Independent HIV-1 Env Trimers Engineered as Soluble Native Spike Mimetics for Vaccine Design
AU - Sharma, Shailendra K.
AU - deVal, Natalia
AU - Bale, Shridhar
AU - Guenaga, Javier
AU - Tran, Karen
AU - Feng, Yu
AU - Dubrovskaya, Viktoriya
AU - Ward, Andrew B.
AU - Wyatt, Richard T.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 The Authors.
PY - 2015/4/28
Y1 - 2015/4/28
N2 - Viral glycoproteins mediate entry by pH-activated or receptor-engaged activation and exist in metastable pre-fusogenic states that may be stabilized by directed rational design. As recently reported, the conformationally fixed HIV-1 envelope glycoprotein (Env) trimers in the pre-fusion state (SOSIP) display molecular homogeneity and structural integrity at relatively high levels of resolution. However, the SOSIPs necessitate full Env precursor cleavage, which requires endogenous furin overexpression. Here, we developed an alternative strategy using flexible peptide covalent linkage of Env subdomains to produce soluble, homogeneous, and cleavage-independent Env mimics, called native flexibly linked (NFL) trimers, as vaccine candidates. This simplified design avoids the need for furin co-expression and, in one case, antibody affinity purification to accelerate trimer scale-up for preclinical and clinical applications. We have successfully translated the NFL design to multiple HIV-1 subtypes, establishing the potential to become a general method of producing native-like, well-ordered Env trimers for HIV-1 or other viruses.
AB - Viral glycoproteins mediate entry by pH-activated or receptor-engaged activation and exist in metastable pre-fusogenic states that may be stabilized by directed rational design. As recently reported, the conformationally fixed HIV-1 envelope glycoprotein (Env) trimers in the pre-fusion state (SOSIP) display molecular homogeneity and structural integrity at relatively high levels of resolution. However, the SOSIPs necessitate full Env precursor cleavage, which requires endogenous furin overexpression. Here, we developed an alternative strategy using flexible peptide covalent linkage of Env subdomains to produce soluble, homogeneous, and cleavage-independent Env mimics, called native flexibly linked (NFL) trimers, as vaccine candidates. This simplified design avoids the need for furin co-expression and, in one case, antibody affinity purification to accelerate trimer scale-up for preclinical and clinical applications. We have successfully translated the NFL design to multiple HIV-1 subtypes, establishing the potential to become a general method of producing native-like, well-ordered Env trimers for HIV-1 or other viruses.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.celrep.2015.03.047
DO - 10.1016/j.celrep.2015.03.047
M3 - Article
C2 - 25892233
AN - SCOPUS:84928583366
SN - 2211-1247
VL - 11
SP - 539
EP - 550
JO - Cell Reports
JF - Cell Reports
IS - 4
ER -