Multispecific anti-HIV duoCAR-T cells display broad in vitro antiviral activity and potent in vivo elimination of HIV-infected cells in a humanized mouse model.

TitleMultispecific anti-HIV duoCAR-T cells display broad in vitro antiviral activity and potent in vivo elimination of HIV-infected cells in a humanized mouse model.
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2019
AuthorsAnthony-Gonda K, Bardhi A, Ray A, Flerin N, Li M, Chen W, Ochsenbauer C, Kappes JC, Krueger W, Worden A, Schneider D, Zhu Z, Orentas R, Dimitrov DS, Goldstein H, Dropulić B
JournalSci Transl Med
Volume11
Issue504
Date Published2019 Aug 07
ISSN1946-6242
Abstract

Adoptive immunotherapy using chimeric antigen receptor-modified T cells (CAR-T) has made substantial contributions to the treatment of certain B cell malignancies. Such treatment modalities could potentially obviate the need for long-term antiretroviral drug therapy in HIV/AIDS. Here, we report the development of HIV-1-based lentiviral vectors that encode CARs targeting multiple highly conserved sites on the HIV-1 envelope glycoprotein using a two-molecule CAR architecture, termed duoCAR. We show that transduction with lentiviral vectors encoding multispecific anti-HIV duoCARs confer primary T cells with the capacity to potently reduce cellular HIV infection by up to 99% in vitro and >97% in vivo. T cells are the targets of HIV infection, but the transduced T cells are protected from genetically diverse HIV-1 strains. The CAR-T cells also potently eliminated PBMCs infected with broadly neutralizing antibody-resistant HIV strains, including VRC01/3BNC117-resistant HIV-1. Furthermore, multispecific anti-HIV duoCAR-T cells demonstrated long-term control of HIV infection in vivo and prevented the loss of CD4 T cells during HIV infection using a humanized NSG mouse model of intrasplenic HIV infection. These data suggest that multispecific anti-HIV duoCAR-T cells could be an effective approach for the treatment of patients with HIV-1 infection.

DOI10.1126/scitranslmed.aav5685
Alternate JournalSci Transl Med
PubMed ID31391322