AIDS vaccination studies using an ex vivo feline immunodeficiency virus model: reevaluation of neutralizing antibody levels elicited by a protective and a nonprotective vaccine after removal of antisubstrate cell antibodies

In the feline immunodeficiency virus system, immunization with a fixed-infected-cell vaccine conferred protection against virulent homologous challenge but the immune effectors involved remained elusive. In particular, few or no neutralizing antibodies were detected in sera from vaccinated cats. Here we show that, when preadsorbed with selected feline cells, the same sera revealed clearly evident virus-neutralizing activity. Because high titers of neutralizing antibody in cell-adsorbed sera from 23 cats immunized with fixed-infected-cell or whole-inactivated-virus vaccines correlated with protection, it is likely that they were more important for protection than formerly realized. In vitro, the fixed-cell vaccine efficiently removed neutralizing antibody from immune sera while the whole-inactivated-virus vaccine was much less effective.