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Structural and genetic signatures of two classes of HCV E2 neutralizing face antibodies from non-human primates immunized with a recombinant E1E2

Nguyen, Y. T. K.; Chen, F.; Giang, E.; Saha, S.; Ueno, L. A.; Chen, C.; Watson, C. T.; Tzarum, N.; Wilson, I. A.; Law, M.; Stanfield, R.

2025-10-07 immunology
10.1101/2025.10.07.680784 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Hepatitis C continues to be a significant public health problem despite advancements in antiviral therapeutics. To eliminate this disease, an effective vaccine against new infections and re-infections is needed. However, to date only one Hepatitis C virus (HCV) envelope protein (E1E2) immunogen, developed by Chiron Inc., has been tested in a Phase I clinical trial (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier NCT00500747). To establish a benchmark for elicitation of broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs) by E1E2, we previously immunized non-human primates (NHPs) with this immunogen and isolated monoclonal nAbs that exhibit neutralization potency comparable to human nAbs. Here we show that NHP nAbs, encoded by germline genes IGHV1-138*01 and IGHV4-NL_5*01 (homologs of human IGHV1-69*10 and IGHV4-59*12, respectively), recognize a relatively E2 conserved region (neutralizing face) proximal to antigenic region 3 (AR3). These NHP AR3-targeting nAbs share highly similar binding modes to human AR3-targeting nAbs, suggesting a similarity in human and NHP immune responses to the same HCV immunogen.

Published in npj Vaccines (predicted rank #12) · training set

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