Productive infection of CD4+ cells by selected HIV strains is not inhibited by anti-CD4 monoclonal antibodies.

Differential susceptibility of four diverse HIV strains to inhibition of infection of CD4+ CEM cells by anti-CD4 monoclonal antibodies was studied. The highly cytopathic HIV-1 246 and NDK strains were able to infect CEM cells and undergo several cycles of replication at saturating doses of LEU3-A, OKT4-A, and 13B8-2 monoclonal antibodies, whereas propagation of reference HIV-1 BRU and weakly cytopathic strain HIV-1 PAS was inhibited. Postadsorption treatment by anti-CD4 antibodies had stronger inhibitory effect than did treatment during the virus adsorption period. In parallel experiments, the same monoclonal antibodies successfully blocked syncytium formation between uninfected MT4 cells and CEM cells infected by all four HIV-1 virus strains tested. To explain these seemingly contradictory data we have postulated that anti-CD4 antibodies efficiently inhibit cell-to-cell but not virus-to-cell infection.