Antibody Engineering as Opportunity for Selection and Optimization of Anti- HIV Therapeutic Agents

Since among patients who receive care for HIV-1 infection, the prevalence of antiretroviral drug resistance is 50%, clearly, new approaches to control viral replication are needed. A hundred years later the first proposal of a magic bullet by Paul Ehrlich antibody -based therapeutics currently enjoys unprecedented success. The methodologies devel- oped in these years such as antibody library, phage display, single domain antibody and the possibility to modify the al- ready well-studied antibodies in a way to render them more suitable for the specific purpose, make antibody a different and valid alternative therapy. Four human\humanized antibodies for anti HIV treatment are currently in clinical trial with some promising results. They target different antigens: the gp120 of the viral coat and the receptor or co-receptor of the virus. The development of therapeutic antibody in HIV field is progressing slowly but today, the improvement in the knowledge of antibody structure and function together with advances in protein engineering can be used to reshape anti- body molecules and devise strategies to obtain more suitable antibody for therapy.