Pamela J. Bjorkman

HIV/AIDs has been imposing fatal health risks to various communities for many years. With the more recent medical breakthroughs, scientists have been able to find ways to increase the life span of the infected individuals, but there has not been a development of vaccines to prevent people from contracting it in the first place.

Dr. Bjorkman and her team have been able to identify antibodies that might help future scientists create a cure for this deadly disease. We’re going to learn about her research as we start today’s topic.

Dr. Bjorkman is an American biochemist currently a professor of Biology at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). She got her bachelor of arts in chemistry from the University of Oregon and her Ph.D. in biochemistry at Harvard University.

The subject of today’s topic revolves around her team’s findings of antibiotics that were found to have an effect on decreasing the contraction of HIV-1 in mice. These mice, known as humanized mice, have been incubated with either human cells, genes, or tissues. These newly found antibodies can alter the active infections that also affect the mouse’s immunity upon their contraction of HIV-1, alleviating stress from their immune system. This finding suggests that these antibodies can be helpful in anti-HIV-1 therapies as well.

The HIV-1 cycle begins with their recognition by the host’s cells as they attempt to penetrate through the membrane using their envelopes’ spikes (Env). The two subunits of Env are gp 160 and gp 41, which assist in the recognition, reception, and fusion of HIV-1. The host’s immune system is able to fight off the virus to the point where the viral loads drop by almost 1000 times after 5 weeks of contraction using these newly found antibodies. Anti-Env antibodies can be detected several weeks after incubation, yet they don’t have a major effect in helping the immune system. These antibodies mostly attack the gp 41 subunit and cause little alterations or changes to the effectiveness of the virus’ work. Because of the high rate of mutation of HIV-1, gp 120-directed antibodies that alter the shape of Env in various variants fail to prevent an infection, allowing the virus to escape with every mutation. The anti-Env antibodies are also unable to bind to spikes as the length of one spike to another is too far for the arms of the antibody to reach, so it is almost impossible to utilize them in a clinical setting because of their low rates of effectivity.

With more and more ongoing research over the creation of vaccines against these viruses, the team was able to suggest studies around the alteration of the Env’s spike proteins to be done as they showed to be the most promising amongst most other factors under study.

It is important to learn about the ways viruses and microbes can cause illness so that vaccines and other means of preventions can be developed.

References:

– Bjorkman, P. J. (2020). Can we use structural knowledge to design a protective vaccine against HIV-1? Hla, 95(2), 95-103. https://doi.org/10.1111/tan.13759

– Libertext Biology Works. (2021). Origin of HIV-1 M: An Example of Molecular Clock Application. Libertexts. https://bio.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Microbiology/Book%3A_Microbiology_%28Boundless%29/9%3A_Viruses/9._10%3A_Retroviruses%3A_Double-Stranded_RNA_Viruses/9.10B%3A_HIV_Attachment_and_Host_Cell_Entry

– Pamela L. Bjorkman (1994). Canadian Gairdner International Award 1994. Gairdner. https://gairdner.org/award_winners/pamela-j-bjorkman/

– West, A., Scharf, L., Scheid, J., Klein, F., Bjorkman, P., & Nussenzweig, M. (2014). Structural insights on the role of antibodies in HIV-1 vaccine and therapy. Cell, 156(4), 633-648. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2014.01.052

*This Scientist Spotlight has just been published here (Oct. 2023):  https://scientistspotlights.org/scientist/pamela-j-bjorkman/