Antibodies of HIV-1 positive subjects and experimentally immunized primates and rodents bind to sequence divergent regions of the third variable domain (V3) of gp120.

Several motifs have been found to be the target of the neutralizing antibody response to HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus. One of the well characterized motifs maps to a loop within the third hypervariable region (V3) of the exterior envelope glycoprotein gp120 at amino acid positions 308-331 and is referred to as the principal neutralizing determinant (PND). The sequence of this V3 loop raises the question of the immunogenicity and the degree of diversity of the antibody response to the PND. We show here that this neutralization-related motif is highly immunogenic in HIV-positive subjects and in experimentally immunized primates and rodents submitted to various anti-HIV immunization regimens. In probing the diversity of the antibody response to PNDs corresponding to 11 HIV sequence-divergent isolates in serum samples of 101 HIV-positive individuals we found that human antibodies exhibit binding affinity to up to nine PND synthetic peptides. This antibody binding was in all cases tested inhibitable by the homologous PND synthetic peptide. We additionally demonstrate that this antibody cross-reactivity towards sequence-divergent PNDs is detectable in the sera of mice and chimpanzees experimentally immunized against a single HIV-1 isolate. Finally, we noticed that there is a hierarchy of reactivity among the various PNDs wherein the synthetic peptide corresponding to the MN isolate was generally the most prominently recognized by antibodies of human, non-human primate, and rodent origins. Based on these findings and on features of the sequences analyzed we suggest that, despite its overall sequence variability, the PND encompasses conserved amino acid positions or epitopes that are the targets of antibodies recognizing sequence-divergent isolates. We also propose that the high positive charge density of the most frequently recognized PNDs and the high antigenicity value of some of their residues are critical to the broad immunoreactivity of this neutralization-related motif.