HIV-1 p24 detection provides a means to aid the early diagnosis of HIV-1 infection, track the progression of disease and assess the efficacy of antiretroviral therapy. In the present study, three monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) p3JB9, p5F1 and p6F4 against HIV-1 p24 were generated. All mAbs could detect p24 of HIV-1IIIB, HIV-1Ada-M, HIV-174V mAbs p5F1 and p6F4 could detect HIV-1KM018, while p3JB9 could not. Three mAbs did not react with HIV-2ROD, HIV-2CBL-20 and SIVagmTYO-1. The recognized epitope of p5F1 was located on the Gag amino acid region DCKTILKALGPAATLEEMMTAC. The p5F1 was used to establish a modified sandwich ELISA with rabbit anti-p24 serum and showed good specificity and high sensitivity, which has been used to measure HIV-1 p24 antigen levels in research.
Many B cell epitopes within p24 of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) were identified, while most of them were determined by using murine monoclonal antibodies reacting with overlapping peptides of p24.Therefore these epitopes may not represent the actual epitopes recognized by the HIV-1 infected individuals. In the present study, immune responses of 67 HIV-1 positive sera from Yunnan Province, China to five peptides on p24 of HIV-1 and one of HIV-2 were analyzed. All of 67 sera did not recognize peptide GA-12 on HIV-1 and peptide AG-23 on HIV-2, which indicated that GA-12 was not human B cell epitope and AG-23 did not cross-react with HIV-1 positive serum. Except 13 sera (19.4%), all remaining sera did not recognize peptides NI-15, DR-16, DC-22and PS-18, which indicated that these four peptides represented B cell linear epitopes of HIV-1 p24 in some HIV-1infected individuals but not the immuno-dominant epitopes in most individuals.
