Research Collaboration Results in Nature Communications Paper
The research collaboration of Prof. Bjoern Reinhard, BU Chemistry and The BU Photonics Center, and Prof. Suryaram Gummuluru, BU School of Medicine, Microbiology, has resulted in a paper published in Nature Communications (20 June 2014). The paper is entitled “Glycosphingolipid-functionalized nanoparticles recapitulate CD169-dependent HIV-1 uptake and trafficking in dendritic cells.” It reports on the development of a model system consisting of self-assembled artificial virus nanoparticles (AVNs) that are free of viral glycoproteins or other host-derived glycolipids and glycoproteins.
Binding of AVNs by mature dendritic cells induces nanoparticle sequestration within tetraspanin-positive compartments, which is reminiscent of the storage of HIV-1 particles in deep plasma membrane invaginations during dendritc cell mediated trans-infection. The reported findings are significant because they indicate an important role of host-derived glycosphingolipids in virus – host cell interactions. Furthermore, these AVNs provide new targeted delivery strategies to key innate cells of the immune system. This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health (R56A104399).
The co-authors from Prof. Reinhard’s laboratory are Xinwei Yu, Amin Feizpour, Linxi Wu, and Fangda Xu. The co-authors from the Gummuluru laboratory are Nora-Guadalupe P. Ramirez and Hisashi Akiyama.