Most successful vaccines elicit neutralizing antibodies and this property is a high priority when developing an HIV vaccine. Indeed, passively administered neutralizing antibodies have been shown to protect against HIV challenge in some of the best available animal models. For example, antibodies given intravenously can protect macaques against intravenous or mucosal SHIV (an HIV/SIV chimaera) challenge and topically applied antibodies can protect macaques against vaginal SHIV challenge. However, the mechanism(s) by which neutralizing antibodies afford protection against HIV is not understood and, in particular, the role of antibody Fc-mediated effector functions is unclear. Here we report that there is a dramatic decrease in the ability of a broadly neutralizing antibody to protect macaques against SHIV challenge when Fc receptor and complement-binding activities are engineered out of the antibody. No loss of antibody protective activity is associated with the elimination of complement binding alone. Our in vivo results are consistent with in vitro assays indicating that interaction of Fc-receptor-bearing effector cells with antibody-complexed infected cells is important in reducing virus yield from infected cells. Overall, the data suggest the potential importance of activity against both infected cells and free virus for effective protection against HIV.

Neutralizing antibodies are thought crucial to HIV vaccine protection but a major hurdle is the high antibody concentrations likely required as suggested by studies in animal models1. However, these studies typically apply a large virus inoculum to ensure infection in control animals in single challenge experiments. In contrast, most human infection via sexual encounter probably involves repeated exposures to much lower doses of virus2–4. Therefore, animal studies may have overestimated protective antibody levels in humans. To investigate the impact of virus challenge dose on antibody protection, we repeatedly exposed macaques intravaginally to low doses of a CCR5 coreceptor-using SHIV (an HIV/SIV chimera) in the presence of antibody at plasma concentrations leading to relatively modest neutralization titers of the order of 1:5 IC90 values in a PBMC assay. An effector function deficient variant of the neutralizing antibody was also included. The results show that a significantly greater number of challenges are required to infect animals treated with neutralizing antibody than control antibody-treated animals, and the notion that effector function may contribute to antibody protection is supported. Overall, the results imply that lower levels of antibody than considered hereto may provide benefit in the context of typical human exposure to HIV-1.

Simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) lineages have been identified that are endemic to Bioko Island. The time the island formed offers a geological time scale calibration point for dating the most recent common ancestor of SIV. The Bioko viruses cover the whole range of SIV genetic diversity, and each Bioko SIV clade is most closely related to viruses circulating in hosts of the same genus on the African mainland rather than to SIVs of other Bioko species. Our phylogeographic approach establishes that SIV is ancient and at least 32,000 years old. Our conservative calibration point and analyses of gene sequence saturation and dating bias suggest it may be much older.

We constructed vaccine vectors based on live recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) and a Semliki Forest virus (SFV) replicon (SFVG) that propagates through expression of the VSV glycoprotein (G). These vectors expressing simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) Gag and Env proteins were used to vaccinate rhesus macaques with a new heterologous prime-boost regimen designed to optimize induction of antibody. Six vaccinated animals and six controls were then given a high-dose mucosal challenge with the diverse SIVsmE660 quasispecies. All control animals became infected and had peak viral RNA loads of 10 6 to 10 8 copies/ml. In contrast, four of the vaccinees showed significant ( P = 0.03) apparent sterilizing immunity and no detectable viral loads. Subsequent CD8 + T cell depletion confirmed the absence of SIV infection in these animals. The two other vaccinees had peak viral loads of 7 × 10 5 and 8 × 10 3 copies/ml, levels below those of all of the controls, and showed undetectable virus loads by day 42 postchallenge. The vaccine regimen induced high-titer prechallenge serum neutralizing antibodies (nAbs) to some cloned SIVsmE660 Env proteins, but antibodies able to neutralize the challenge virus swarm were not detected. The cellular immune responses induced by the vaccine were generally weak and did not correlate with protection. Although the immune correlates of protection are not yet clear, the heterologous VSV/SFVG prime-boost is clearly a potent vaccine regimen for inducing virus nAbs and protection against a heterogeneous viral swarm.

Although current postexposure prophylaxis rabies virus (RV) vaccines are effective, ~40,000–70,000 rabies-related deaths are reported annually worldwide. The development of effective formulations requiring only 1–2 applications would significantly reduce mortality. We assessed in mice and nonhuman primates the efficacy of replication-deficient RV vaccine vectors that lack either the matrix (M) or phosphoprotein (P) gene. A single dose of M gene–deficient RV induced a more rapid and efficient anti-RV response than did P gene–deficient RV immunization. Furthermore, the M gene–deleted RV vaccine induced 4-fold higher virus-neutralizing antibody (VNA) levels in rhesus macaques than did a commercial vaccine within 10 days after inoculation, and at 180 days after immunization rhesus macaques remained healthy and had higher-avidity antibodies, higher VNA titers, and a more potent antibody response typical of a type 1 T helper response than did animals immunized with a commercial vaccine. The data presented in this article suggest that the M gene–deleted RV vaccine is safe and effective and holds the potential of replacing current pre- and postexposure RV vaccines.