Complementary Roles of Antibody Heavy and Light Chain Somatic Hypermutation in Conferring Breadth and Potency to the HIV-1-Specific CAP256-VRC26 bNAb Lineage

Abstract

A major focus in the search for an HIV vaccine is elucidating the ontogeny of broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs), which prevent HIV infection in vitro and in vivo . The unmutated common ancestors (UCAs) of bNAbs are generally strain specific and acquire breadth through extensive, and sometimes redundant, somatic hypermutation during affinity maturation.