Abstract
The membrane proximal external region (MPER) of gp41 abuts the viral membrane at the base of HIVβ1 envelope glycoprotein spikes. The MPER is highly conserved and is rich in Trp and other lipophilic residues. The MPER is also required for the infection of host cells by HIVβ1 and is the target of the broadly neutralizing antibodies, 4E10, 2F5, and Z13e1. These neutralizing antibodies are valuable tools for understanding relevant conformations of the MPER and for studying HIVβ1 neutralization, but multiple approaches used to elicit MPER binding antibodies with similar neutralization properties have failed. Here we report our efforts to mimic the MPER using linear as well as constrained peptides. Unnatural amino acids were also introduced into the core epitope of 4E10 to probe requirements of antibody binding. Peptide analogs with Cβterminal Api or Aib residues designed to be helical transmembrane (TM) domain surrogates exhibit enhanced binding to the 4E10 and Z13e1 antibodies. However, we find that placement of constrained amino acids at nonbinding sites within the core epitope significantly reduce binding. These results are relevant to an understanding of native MPER structure on HIVβ1, and form a basis for a chemical synthesis approach to mimic MPER stricture and to construct an MPERβbased vaccine. Copyright Β© 2010 European Peptide Society and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.