A novel HIV-1 inhibitor that blocks viral replication and rescues APOBEC3s by interrupting Vif/CBFβ interaction.

HIV remains a health challenge worldwide, partly due to the continued development of resistance to the drugs. Therefore, it is urgent to find new HIV inhibitors and targets. Apolipoprotein B mRNA-editing catalytic polypeptide-like 3 family members (APOBEC3) are important host restriction factors that inhibit HIV-1 replication by their cytidine deaminase activity. HIV-1 viral infectivity factor (Vif) promotes proteasomal degradation of APOBEC3 proteins by recruiting the E3 ubiquitin ligase complex, in which core binding factor beta (CBFβ) is a necessary molecular chaperone. Interrupting the interaction between Vif and CBFβ can release APOBEC3 proteins to inhibit HIV-1 replication and may be useful for developing new drug targets for HIV-1. In this study, we identified a potent small molecule inhibitor (CV-3) of HIV-1 replication by employing structure-based virtual screening using the crystal structure of Vif and CBFβ (PDB ID: 4N9F), and validated CV-3's anti-viral activity. We found that CV-3 specifically inhibited HIV-1 replication (IC50 = 8.16 μM; CC50 >100 μM) in non-permissive lymphocytes. Furthermore, CV-3 treatment rescued APOBEC3 family members (hA3G, hA3C, and hA3F) in the presence of Vif and enabled hA3G packaging into HIV-1 virions, which resulted in G-to-A hypermutations in viral genomes. Finally, we used FRET to demonstrate that CV-3 inhibited the interaction between Vif and CBFβ by simultaneously forming hydrogen bonds with residues Q67, I102 and R131 of CBFβ. These findings demonstrate that CV-3 can effectively inhibit HIV-1 by blocking the interaction between Vif and CBFβ and that this interaction can serve as a new target for developing HIV-1 inhibitors.