Novel anti-HIV-1 activity produced by conjugating unsulfated dextran with polyL-lysine

A conjugate of polyL-lysine (PLL) with unsulfated dextran produced by reductive amination was found to have remarkable anti-HIV-1 activity against both the macrophage-tropic R5 virus Ba-L and T-cell line tropic X4 virus IIIB strains, although neither PLL nor dextran has such activity. The conjugate is a pseudoproteoglycan (pseudoPG) that simulates the structure of a proteoglycan. Conjugation with dextran was found to produce an antiviral effect in three kinds of assay systems including a human CD4(+) T-cell line, and the pseudoPG synthesized using 10 kDa PLL and 10 kDa dextran showed EC(50) 4-40 times lower than that of sulfated dextran or heparin against Ba-L and EC(50) equal to that against IIIB, indicating that PLL-dextran (PLL-Dex) was more effective against R5 virus than sulfated polysaccharides. PLL-Dex significantly suppressed a clinically isolated R5 virus from primary peripheral blood mononuclear cells. PLL-Dex interacted with the virus during adsorption to the cell and also decreased virus entry into the cell, suggesting PLL-Dex has multiple preventive mechanisms against HIV-1.