Slaying the Trojan horse: natural killer cells exhibit robust anti-HIV-1 antibody-dependent activation and cytolysis against allogeneic T cells

Many attempts to design prophylactic human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) vaccines have focused on the induction of neutralizing antibodies (Abs) that block infection by free virions. Despite the focus on viral particles, virus-infected cells, which can be found within mucosal secretions, are more infectious than free virus both in vitro and in vivo. Furthermore, assessment of human transmission couples suggests infected seminal lymphocytes might be responsible for a proportion of HIV-1 transmissions. Although vaccines that induce neutralizing Abs are sought, only some broadly neutralizing Abs efficiently block cell-to-cell transmission of HIV-1. As HIV-1 vaccines need to elicit immune responses capable of controlling both free and cell-associated virus, we evaluated the potential of natural killer (NK) cells to respond in an Ab-dependent manner to allogeneic T cells bearing HIV-1 antigens. This study presents data measuring Ab-dependent anti-HIV-1 NK cell responses to primary and transformed allogeneic T-cell targets. We found that NK cells are robustly activated in an anti-HIV-1 Ab-dependent manner against allogeneic targets and that tested target cells are subject to Ab-dependent cytolysis. Furthermore, the educated KIR3DL1(+) NK cell subset from HLA-Bw4(+) individuals exhibits an activation advantage over the KIR3DL1(-) subset that contains both NK cells educated through other receptor/ligand combinations and uneducated NK cells. These results are intriguing and important for understanding the regulation of Ab-dependent NK cell responses and are potentially valuable for designing Ab-dependent therapies and/or vaccines.

Importance: NK cell-mediated anti-HIV-1 antibody-dependent functions have been associated with protection from infection and disease progression; however, their role in protecting from infection with allogeneic cells infected with HIV-1 is unknown. We found that HIV-1-specific ADCC antibodies bound to allogeneic cells infected with HIV-1 or coated with HIV-1 gp120 were capable of activating NK cells and/or trigging cytolysis of the allogeneic target cells. This suggests ADCC may be able to assist in preventing infection with cell-associated HIV-1. In order to fully utilize NK cell-mediated Ab-dependent effector functions, it might also be important that educated NK cells, which hold the highest activation potential, can become activated against targets bearing HIV-1 antigens and expressing the ligands for self-inhibitory receptors. Here, we show that with Ab-dependent stimulation, NK cells expressing inhibitory receptors can mediate robust activation against targets expressing the ligands for those receptors.