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Blood, 12 February 2009, Vol. 113, No. 7, pp. 1422-1431. Prepublished online as a Blood First Edition Paper on December 4, 2008; DOI 10.1182/blood-2008-09-177139.
Submitted September 8, 2008
Division of Biology, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, United States * Corresponding author; email: baltimo{at}caltech.edu.
Broadly neutralizing anti-HIV antibodies are rare and have proved hard to elicit with any immunogen. We have tested in vitro the notion that such antibodies or other anti-viral proteins could be made by lentivirus-mediated gene transfer into human hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells (HSPCs), followed by differentiation of the transduced cells into B cells, the most potent antibody-producing cells. To do this, we have developed a highly efficient system for in vitro maturation of secreting B lymphocytes and plasma cells from CD34+ HSPCs. It is a three-stage, in vitro culture system that supports normal human B-lineage development from HSPCs to antibody-secreting plasmablasts (~36%) and plasma cells (~20%). By transducing human cord blood CD34+ cells with lentiviral vectors encoding a secretory monoclonal anti-HIV antibody, b12 (IgG1), we were able to program human B cells to produce in vitro up to 1.5 µg/mL of this broadly neutralizing antibody. Our results suggest that an HIV vaccine might be delivered by autologous transplantation of in vitro-programmed HSPCs, which would develop into antibody-secreting B cells in vivo and provide a continuous supply of anti-HIV neutralizing antibodies.
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