ICAM 2023 _ Event Postponement

This is to inform that due to some circumstances beyond the organizer control, “2nd Edition of International Conference and Expo on Applied Microbiology” (ICAM 2023) Hybrid Event scheduled during June 23-24, 2023 | Rome, Italy has been postponed. The updated dates and venue will be displayed shortly.

Your registration can be transferred to the next edition, if you have already confirmed your participation at the event.

For further details, please contact us at applied-microbiology@magnusconference.com or call +1 (702) 988 2320.

HYBRID EVENT: You can participate in person at Rome, Italy or Virtually from your home or work.
Speaker at Applied Microbiology 2022 - Alon Herschhorn
Alon Herschhorn
University of Minnesota, United States
Title : In vivo evolution of a transmitted/founder HIV-1 strain that is highly resistant to broadly neutralizing antibodies

Abstract:

Background
Envelope glycoproteins (Envs) of human immunodeficiency virus type I (HIV-1) mediate viral entry and are the sole target of neutralizing antibodies. Envs of most primary HIV-1 strains prefer to be in a closed conformation (State 1) and occasionally sample downstream conformational states (State 2 and State 3). Thus, current knowledge guides immunogen design towards mimicking the Env closed conformation as the preferred target for eliciting broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs). Ideally, a vaccine for HIV-1 prevention should elicit bnAbs that can block the transmission of transmitted/founder (T/F) HIV-1 strains, which are a subset of HIV-1 strains that can cross the mucosal bottleneck and establish HIV-1 infection in vivo.
Methods
Here we studied different T/F strains that have been previously published and identified one T/F strain, CH040, that is highly resistant to bnAbs.  We reconstructed the post-transmission evolutionary pathway of CH040 in vivo by building pseudoviruses based on consensus viral sequences at different time points during CH040 evolution in the infected individual. Consensus viral sequences were determined by analyzing available sequences from the HIV-1 database that span more than 4 years of viral evolution. We used reconstructed pseudoviruses to study the evolution of HIV-1 Env function and sensitivity to Env ligands.
Results
Evolved CH040 viruses were less sensitive than CH040 to cold and soluble HIV-1 receptor (CD4), and became resistant to the 19b antibody, which preferentially recognizes a more open Env conformations. All of which correlate with the evolution of a more closed Env state. These changes were associated with alterations in CH040 sensitivity to several bnAbs during viral evolution under the pressure of autologous antibody response in the infected individual.
Conclusion
Our results provide insights into HIV-1 evolution in vivo and evidence for the continuous range of Env conformational states. These findings can aid the development of new strategies to improve bnAb immunotherapy and Env-based immunogen design.

Biography:

Alon Herschhorn Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Minnesota. Prior to his current faculty appointment, Dr. Herschhorn held a faculty position as Instructor in Microbiology and Immunobiology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, where he developed strong research program on virus entry and fate, with a specific focus on HIV-1. Dr. Herschhorn successfully obtained the prestigious Rothschild and amfAR fellowships as well as external funding, and developed productive collaborations with different research groups in USA and Canada.
Dr. Herschhorn is leading a new research group in the Division of Infectious Diseases and International Medicine that will develop new tools to study, at the molecular and cellular levels, the mechanisms underlying virus-host interactions. His previous work provided new insights into the entry process of HIV-1, the conformational dynamics of the HIV-1 envelope glycoproteins, and the cellular processes that contribute to the fate of viral infection.

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