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Original Article |
Correspondence to: Andrew Blauvelt, Bldg. 10, Rm. 12N238, 10 Center Dr., MSC 1908, Bethesda, MD 20892-1908. Tel:301-402-4167 Fax:301-402-1439
Initial biologic events that underlie sexual transmission of HIV-1 are poorly understood. To model these events, we exposed human immature Langerhans cells (LCs) within epithelial tissue explants to two primary and two laboratory-adapted HIV-1 isolates. We detected HIV-1Ba-L infection in single LCs that spontaneously emigrated from explants by flow cytometry (median of infected LCs = 0.52%, range = 0.084.77%). HIV-1infected LCs downregulated surface CD4 and CD83, whereas MHC class II, CD80, and CD86 were unchanged. For all HIV-1 strains tested, emigrated LCs were critical in establishing high levels of infection (0.11 µg HIV-1 p24 per milliliter) in cocultured autologous or allogeneic T cells. HIV-1Ba-L (an R5 HIV-1 strain) more efficiently infected LCT cell cocultures when compared with HIV-1IIIB (an X4 HIV-1 strain). Interestingly, pretreatment of explants with either aminooxypentane-RANTES (regulated upon activation, normal T cell expressed and secreted) or cellulose acetate phthalate (potential microbicides) blocked HIV-1 infection of LCs and subsequent T cell infection in a dose-dependent manner. In summary, we document HIV-1 infection in single LCs after exposure to virus within epithelial tissue, demonstrate that relatively low numbers of these cells are capable of inducing high levels of infection in cocultured T cells, and provide a useful explant model for testing of agents designed to block sexual transmission of HIV-1.
Key Words: AIDS, dendritic cells, cellulose acetate phthalate, aminooxypentane-RANTES, transmission
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