학술논문
High frequency of HIV precursor-target-specific B cells in sub-Saharan populations
Document Type
article
Author
Flavio Matassoli; Alberto Cagigi; Chen-Hsiang Shen; Amy R. Henry; Timothy S. Johnston; Chaim A. Schramm; Christopher A. Cottrell; Oleksandr Kalyuzhniy; Abby Spangler; Leigh Eller; Merlin Robb; Michael Eller; Prossy Naluyima; Peter D. Kwong; Daniel C. Douek; William R. Schief; Sarah F. Andrews; Adrian B. McDermott
Source
Cell Reports, Vol 42, Iss 12, Pp 113450- (2023)
Subject
Language
English
ISSN
2211-1247
Abstract
Summary: HIV gp120 engineered outer domain germline-targeting version 8 (eOD-GT8) was designed specifically to engage naive B cell precursors of VRC01-class antibodies. However, the frequency and affinity of naive B cell precursors able to recognize eOD-GT8 have been evaluated only in U.S. populations. HIV infection is disproportionally concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa, so we seek to characterize naive B cells able to recognize eOD-GT8 in sub-Saharan cohorts. We demonstrate that people from sub-Saharan Africa have a higher or equivalent frequency of naive B cells able to engage eOD-GT8 compared with people from the U.S. Genetically, the higher frequency of eOD-GT8-positive cells is accompanied by a higher level of naive B cells with gene signatures characteristic of the VRC01 class, as well as other CD4bs-directed antibodies. Our study demonstrates that vaccination with eOD-GT8 in sub-Saharan Africa could be successful at expanding and establishing a pool of CD4bs-directed memory B cells from naive precursors.