General
Dr Kwinten Sliepen
Amsterdam UMC, Medical Microbiology and Infection Prevention
Title lecture: Designing HCV E1E2 and HIV-1 envelope glycoproteins for vaccine studies
Antiviral drugs targeting components of the viral replication cycle of Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) have significantly improved the life expectancy of patients. However, treatment of these infections remains costly and can range up to 400.000 USD per year for HIV patients. Additionally, resistance against these antiviral drugs is common and induces a continuous requirement for the development of novel drugs. Therefore, an effective preventive vaccine for HCV and HIV-1 is a major unmet need. These vaccines aim to elicit neutralizing antibodies (NAbs), as induction of cross-reactive NAbs correlates with protection against re-infection and viral clearance in HCV-infected individuals and administration of HIV-specific NAbs have been shown to protect from infection in non-human primates for HIV-1.
Biography
Kwinten Sliepen and his group develop novel HCV and HIV-1 glycoproteins and test whether they could serve as vaccine candidates. Kwinten did his PhD with Rogier Sanders at the AMC and developed a novel stabilized HIV-1 envelope trimer that elicited strong NAb responses against autologous virus (Nature Communications 2019). After his PhD, he has now focused on applying his knowledge obtained from the HIV-1 vaccine design to HCV and has been able to uncover the structure of the HCV E1E2 glyocprotein complex (Science 2022). His group has recently started generating HCV E1E2 vaccine candidates and have shown that they can activate HCV-specific B cells using these HCV E1E2 vaccine candidates (Nature Communications 2023).
Host: Nordin Zandhuis