Gene found that may neutralize HIV

Scientists from the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology (GIVI) and the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) have identified a gene that may influence the production of antibodies that neutralize HIV. This new information will likely spur a new approach for making an HIV vaccine that elicits neutralizing antibodies.

Neutralizing antibodies, once produced in the host, can attack and checkmate an infecting virus.

Scientists have been striving in vain to stimulate strong protective antibodies with an HIV vaccine for years because these antibodies hold great promise for controlling HIV infection in humans. HIV is a type of virus called a "retrovirus," which copies its RNA genetic material into DNA and incorporates it into the DNA of its host.

In 1978, researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) studying a similar retrovirus in mice discovered a gene called Rfv3 that influenced the production of neutralizing antibodies that allowed the animals to recover. By 1999, they had narrowed the location of Rfv3 to a relatively small region on mouse chromosome 15, but that region contained more than 60 genes. The laboratory of GIVI Director Warner C. Greene and a team of scientists from NIAID now demonstrate that Rfv3 is Apobec3, an innate immunity gene with antiretroviral activity.

"This newfound link between Apobec3 and the production of neutralizing antibodies came as a complete surprise," said Dr. Greene, senior author on the paper.

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