SIV infection duration largely determines broadening of neutralizing antibody response in macaques

The development of broadly neutralizing antibodies (BNAbs) in HIV infection is a result of long-term coevolutionary interaction between viruses and antibodies. Understanding how this interaction promotes the increase of neutralization breadth during infection will improve the way in which AIDS vaccine strategies are designed. In this paper, we used SIV-infected rhesus macaques as a model to study the development of neutralization breadth by infecting rhesus macaques with longitudinal NAb escape variants and evaluating the kinetics of NAb response and viral evolution. We found that the infected macaques developed a stepwise NAb response against escape variants and increased neutralization breadth during the course of infection. Furthermore, the increase of neutralization breadth correlated with the duration of infection but was independent of properties of the inoculum, viral loads, or viral diversity during infection. These results imply that the duration of infection was the main factor driving the development of BNAbs. These data suggest the importance of novel immunization strategies to induce effective NAb response against HIV infection by mimicking long-term infection.