Pediatric NIH Workshop: Session III-Specialties and Complexities of Juvenile NHP Models for HIV Prevention Research

Nonhuman primates (NHPs) have emerged as an indispensable model for studying HIV pathogenesis, vaccines, and therapies. The development of chimeric Simian/Human immunodeficiency viruses (SHIVs) has been constructed by inserting HIV-1 Env into the SIV (usually SIV_mac239) backbone, and these have proved essential for evaluating HIV neutralizing antibody dynamics and efficacy in vivo, making studies testing the protective efficacy of human broadly neutralizing monoclonal antibodies (bNAbs) in nonhuman primates possible. The original constructs have been improved in several new SHIV strains to improve binding of the Env to the macaque CD4 receptor by an additional mutation, and further improvements continue to be made. Even with some limitations, NHP models using SHIV infection have contributed substantially to the advancement of HIV bNAb use in both adult and pediatric settings.