We used replication-dependent retroviral vectors to identify cell surface antigens involved in the cell-to-cell transmission of human T cell leukemia virus type 1 (HTLV-1). We generated monoclonal antibodies ( H uman T cell leukemia virus type 1 (HTLV-1) is a deltaretrovirus that causes two major diseases, adult T cell leukemia (ATL) (29) and HTLV-1-associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis (HAM/TSP) (1, 51). Unlike HIV-1, which causes fatal immune deficiency-associated diseases in almost all infected individuals if left untreated, only about 5% of HTLV-1-infected people develop disease 10 to 25 years after the initial exposure. The remarkable feature of HTLV-1 is that transmission is 40% effective with blood lymphocytes but never with a patient's plasma (37). The phenomenon was explained by the extremely low infectivity of free viral particles (10, 13) and by the efficient cell-to-cell transmission of HTLV-1. Therefore, HTLV-1 can serve as an excellent model to study the cell-to-cell transmission of retroviruses in vitro. In 2003, Igakura et al. (20) described the formation of a microtubule-dependent cell-cell contact that was induced by HTLV-1. Based on structural and molecular similarity to the immunological synapse (IS), the cell-cell contact zone was named the virological synapse (VS). Later, the formation of the VS was demonstrated for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection (7,21,22,35). Recently, a number of different and remarkable types of cell-cell interactions have been reported to mediate retroviral transmission, particularly nanotubes (43, 45), mono-or polysynapses (42), biofilm-like structures (39), and conduits (52). Nevertheless, our understanding of the mechanisms of viral transmission at the molecular level remains poor.We have recently complemented microscopy studies of cell-tocell transmission by developing inLuc and inYFP reporter vectors for HIV-1 and HTLV-1, which were designed to quantify cell-tocell infection (32). The signal generated by these vectors depends on the completion of a full cycle of virus replication. They are silent in producer cells but generate a readout in target cells. These vectors helped us to clarify the role of the viral protein Tax and different Env proteins in cell-to-cell infection and demonstrated that HTLV-1 is transmitted more efficiently in lymphoid cells than between nonlymphoid cells. In this study, we aimed to define cell surface antigens (Ags) possibly involved in the cell-to-cell infection of HTLV-1 and HIV-1. For that, we generated mouse monoclonal hybridomas against Jurkat cells and screened the monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) by inLuc infectivity assays. Finally, MAbs that decreased cell-to-cell infection were selected. Most of the HTLV-1-inhibitory MAbs recognized the carbohydrate Tn (T-nouvelle) antigen and precipitated the CD43 and CD45 proteins. We found that both the sialophorin CD43 and the phosphatase CD45 were important for HTLV-1 infection. These antigens are heavily O-glycosylated in normal cells, have a rodlike shape, and ext...