Doria-Rose Research Group

The Humoral Immunology Core (HIC) is responsible for providing antibody binding and neutralization data to the Humoral Immunology Section (HIMS) and other VRC laboratories. It routinely performs assays on clinical and preclinical specimens from both infection and immunization studies. The HIC develops and applies neutralization assays to evaluate HIV-1- specific antibody responses, and binding and functional assays to monitor HIV-1 humoral immune responses. In addition, the HIC produces experimental reagents (such as monoclonal antibodies), develops new assays, and provides results of current assays, data quality assurance, and data interpretation to other VRC investigators.

In particular, the core has developed and standardized molecular reporter virus assays to study HIV-1 neutralizing antibodies. Such assays allow the study of diverse viruses isolated from various regions of the world in order to understand the effect of genetic and antigenic diversity and the impact of viral escape on neutralizing antibody responses. The application of such assays allows the study of the antibody specificities in sera from small animals, non-human primates and healthy human volunteers, as well as sera from HIV-1-infected donors. The viral epitopes targeted by serum antibodies can be specifically mapped, and these data can be used to assess specific vaccine immunogens and to help understand the development of neutralizing activity during the course of infection.