James Mullins

Abstract Understanding the selective forces acting upon HIV early in infection is crucial to design prevention strategies. By leveraging deep sequencing and the short diagnostic intervals of the FRESH and RV217 cohorts between the last-negative and first-positive RNA tests (median 4 days), we captured a precise and early snapshot of acute HIV infection.

Abstract In the antibody mediated prevention (AMP) trials, the broadly neutralizing antibody (bNAb) VRC01 demonstrated protective efficacy against susceptible HIV strains. To understand how VRC01 shaped breakthrough infections, deep sequencing was performed on 172 participants (>100,000 gag-Δpol and rev-env-Δnef sequences), at diagnosis and over time, in the placebo and treatment arms of the African (HVTN703/HPTN081; NCT02568215) and Americas/Europe (HVTN704/HPTN085; NCT02716675) cohorts.

Keywords HIV vaccine envelope glycoprotein broadly neutralizing antibodies elite neutralizers V1V2 Env stabilization Introduction Genetic traits of the HIV-1 envelope glycoprotein (Env) that link to bnAb development and escape in untreated HIV-1 infection are key to vaccine immunogen development.