Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Most neutralizing antibodies act at the earliest steps of viral infection and block interaction of the virus with cellular receptors to prevent entry into host cells. The inability to induce neutralizing antibodies to HIV has been a major obstacle to HIV vaccine research since the early days of the epidemic.
However, in the past three years, the definition of a neutralizing antibody against HIV has been revolutionized by the isolation of extremely broad and potent neutralizing antibodies from HIV-infected individuals.
Considerable hurdles remain for inducing neutralizing antibodies to a protective level after immunization. Meanwhile, novel technologies to bypass the induction of antibodies are being explored to provide prophylactic antibody-based interventions. This review addresses the challenge of inducing HIV neutralizing antibodies upon immunization and considers notable recent advances in the field.
A greater understanding of the successes and failures for inducing a neutralizing response upon immunization is required to accelerate the development of an effective HIV vaccine.
The titer of neutralizing antibodies elicited in plasma or sera correlate closely with protection from infection for almost all human and veterinary viral vaccines where neutralization can be measured Plotkin, Not only does this general observation underline the importance of the humoral arm of the immune response in vaccine design but it also highlights the crucial role of those antibodies that block infection at the cellular level.
