Ema T. Crooks

TL;DR: HIV-1 V1V2-directed neutralizing antibodies can develop relatively rapidly through initial selection of B cells with a long CDR H3, and limited subsequent somatic hypermutation, and provide important insights relevant to HIV-1 vaccine development.

TL;DR: The data show for the first time that strain-specific holes in the glycan fence can allow the development of tier 2 neutralizing antibodies to native spikes, and cross-neutralization can occur in the absence of protecting glycan.

TL;DR: Remarkably, sequential glycosidase-protease digests led to a complete or near-complete removal of junk Env from many viral strains, leaving trimers and viral infectivity largely intact.

TL;DR: It is shown that nonfunctional Env can be selectively cleared from virus-like particle (VLP) surfaces by enzyme digests, and a scatterplot analysis revealed a strong correlation between MAb binding and neutralization of trimer VLPs, suggesting that trimerVLPs bear essentially pure native trimer that should allow its unfettered evaluation in a vaccine setting.

TL;DR: A lineage of HIV‐1‐neutralizing antibodies that target the envelope trimer apex is isolated by using virus‐like particles and conformationally stabilized Env trimers as B cell probes and reveals a binding mode involving side‐chain‐to‐side‐chain interactions that reduced the distance the antibody loop must traverse the glycan shield, thereby facilitating V1V2 binding via a non‐protruding loop.