A multivalent HIV-vaccine: development of a plasmid DNA for the expression of HIV envelope glycoproteins with hypervariable V3-loop domains

The third hypervariable (V3) loop of the HIV-1 envelope glycoprotein gp120 plays an essential role in the process of viral entry. It contributes to the tropism, coreceptor usage and immune-escape of the virus. We generated a monovalent plasmid DNA and demonstrated the expression of HIV-1 clade B subtype NL4-3 gp120 and gp160 in comparison to a multivalent plasmid DNA encoding for a variety of V3-variants. In contrast to the membrane-anchored gp160, preliminary data demonstrate the monovariant gp120 is expressed in and presented on a human dendritic cell (DC) line, due to a HIVenv-specific re-stimulation of na?ve T-cells detected by IFNgamma-ELISPOT assay.