Molecular cloning and in vitro evaluation of an infectious simian-human immunodeficiency virus containing env of a primary Chinese HIV-1 subtype C isolate.

Wu Y., Hong K., Chenine AL, Whitney JB, Xu W., Chen Q., Geng Y., Ruprecht RM, and Shao Y.

College of Life Sciences, Nankai University, Tianjin, China.

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) clade C is the most prevalent subtype and accounts for approximately 50% of all HIV infections worldwide. In China, the prevalent HIV strains are B'/C subtypes, in which the envelope belongs to subtype C. To evaluate potential AIDS vaccines targeting Chinese viral strains in non-human primate models, we constructed an infectious simian-human immunodeficiency virus (SHIV) that expresses most of the envelope of a primary HIV strain, which was isolated from a HIV-positive intravenous drug user in Xinjiang province, China. The resulting chimeric SHIV-XJ02170 was infectious in human, rhesus monkey, and cynomolgus monkey peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) and used CCR5 exclusively as coreceptor.