Figure 3.

Inhibition of HIV infection by antibodies specific to CLDN-7. A) Immunostaining of CLDN-7²¹¹ (upper panel) and CLDN-7¹⁵⁸ (lower panel) by CLDN-7-specific polyclonal antibodies. 293T cells (5 × 10⁴) were plated into 35-mm plates 24 hours prior to transfection. CLDN-7 plasmids (3 μg) were used for transfection of each 35-mm plate. At two days post-transfection, the cells were immunostained. CLDN-7 antibodies were added into the plates overnight at 4°C. B) Antisera from NIH (anti-gp160, cat. 191), Zymed (anti-CLDN-7, 0.25 mg/ml), or made by us were added to LNCaP cell cultures at 1:100 v/v 10 minutes prior to adding HIV. Six days post-infection, EGFP-positive cells were counted. Infection of LNCaP cultures with no antibodies was set as the control. EGFP-positive cells in the culture treated with antibodies against CLDN-7 demonstrated 27% ± 0.6% viral infection compared to the control with no antibodies in the cell culture.