Coverage of primary mother-to-child HIV transmission isolates by second-generation broadly neutralizing antibodies

A vaccine capable of providing cross-clade, sterilizing protection has been the holy grail of HIV-1 prevention and control since the beginning of the pandemic. A major component of this effort has been the identification and characterization of broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs). Recent advances in bNAb isolation, structure-based engineering, and vector-mediated gene transfer have led to increased interest in bypassing the immune system by expressing neutralizing antibodies directly in muscle. To assess the neutralization potency and coverage of a panel of second-generation bNAbs, we cloned and phenotypically characterized 227 primary HIV-1 envelopes from 23 mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) pairs.