HVRI found a novel antiviral mechanism against HIV    The Research team of fundamental immunology in Harbin Veterinary Research Institute found a novel pathway for inhibiting the biosynthesis of HIV-1 envelope proteins. They revealed a novel antiretroviral mechanism for development of medicines and are helpful for the production of HIV-1 vaccines. Their findings were published in the Journal of Virololgy in March, 2014.

    Most of the animal viruses including HIV, Influenza Virus, Japanese encephalitis virus, Hepatitis C viru, SARS virus, Ebola hemorrhagic fever virus, and Dengue Fever virus, have an glycoprotein-containing outer membrane. These glycoproteins were called envelope proteins and used by viruses to infect host cells. 

    According to the explanation of Dr. Zheng Yonghui, the head of the research team of Fundamental Immunology, development of HIV vaccines is an intractable issue. One of the problems is that envelope proteins are difficult to be expressed in the mammalian cells. In 1980’s, scientists found that only 15% of envelope proteins were expressed in the cells infected with HIV. The remaining proteins were stranded in ER and degraded by an unknown mechanism.

    Recently, Dr. Zheng Yonghui’s team made progress on this question. They found a cellular protein expression in a non-permissive human CD4(+) T cell line, he mitochondrial translocator protein TSPO, were upregulated by ∼64-fold. Further studies on this protein proved that knockdown the expression of TSPO restore the expression of envelope proteins and overexpression of TSPO inhibit the production of envelope proteins.

     Dr. Zheng Yonghui said, their results not only provided a clue to explain why envelope proteins could not be produced effectively, but also revealed a novel antiviral mechanism.

（Honglin JIa）

http://jvi.asm.org/cgi/pmidlookup?view=long&pmid=24403586