Non-human primates (NHP) are the only animal model suitable to evaluate the protection efficacy of HIV-1 vaccines. It is important to understand how and when neutralizing antibodies (nAbs) with specificities similar to those of human broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs) develop in NHPs. To address these questions, we determined plasma neutralization specificities in two macaques which developed neutralization breadth after long-term simian/human immunodeficiency virus (SHIV) infection and identified neutralization escape mutations by analyzing the env sequences from longitudinal plasma samples. Neutralization activities targeting V2, CD4bs, V3 and gp120-gp41 interface only became detectable in week 350 plasma from macaques G1015R and G1020R using 25710 env mutants. When mapped with CAP45 env mutants, only V2 specificity was detected at week 217 and persisted until week 350 in G1015R. Neutralization escape mutations were found in CD4bs and V2 regions. However, all of them were different from those resistant mutations identified for human bnAbs. These results show that nAbs with specificities similar to human bnAbs are only detectable after long-term SHIV infection and that neutralization escape mutations in macaques are different from those found in HIV-1-infected individuals. These findings can have important implications in the best utilization of the NHP model to evaluate HIV-1 vaccines.
Keywords: escape mutation; neutralizing antibody; non-human primate; simian/human immunodeficiency virus; specificities.