Construction of SHIVs expressing quaternary neutralization epitopes in Env and mimicking the neutralization phenotype of typical HIV-1 isolates

Background Infection of macaques with chimeric Simian/Human Immunodeficiency Viruses (SHIVs) provides a powerful model for HIV pathogenesis and vaccine development. A limitation of the SHIVs routinely used for vaccine studies, e.g. SHIV-1157ipd3N4, SHIV-SF162P3, and SHIV-BaL, is that they don’t express quaternary neutralization epitopes (QNEs) that are targets of broadly neutralizing antibodies like PG9, PG16, and CAP256 sera. We sought to introduce the QNEs into functional SHIVs to study how such antibodies develop during infection and help guide the creation of antigens capable of eliciting such antibodies.