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Publication Abstract from PubMed

The Rabbit is a commonly used animal model in studying antibody responses in HIV/AIDS vaccine development. However, no rabbit monoclonal antibodies have been developed previously to study the epitope specific antibody responses against HIV-1 envelope glycoproteins (Env), and little is known about how the rabbit immune system can mimic the human immune system in eliciting such antibodies. Here we present structural analyses of two rabbit monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), R56 and R20, against the third variable region (V3) of HIV-1 gp120. R56 recognizes the well-studied immunogenic region in the V3 crown, while R20 targets a less-studied region at the C-terminus of V3. By comparison of the Fab/epitope complex structures of these two antibodies raised by immunization with that of the corresponding human antibodies derived from patients chronically infected by HIV-1, we found that rabbit antibodies can recognize immunogenic regions of gp120 and mimic the binding modes of human antibodies. This result can provide new insight in using the rabbit as an animal model in AIDS vaccine development.

Rabbit anti-HIV-1 monoclonal antibodies raised by immunization can mimic the antigen-binding modes of antibodies derived from HIV-1 infected humans.,Pan R, Sampson JM, Chen Y, Vaine M, Wang S, Lu S, Kong XP J Virol. 2013 Jul 17. PMID:23864637^[1]

From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.