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Journal of Clinical Microbiology, March 2001, p. 1124-1129, Vol. 39, No. 3
Istituto di Malattie Infettive e Tropicali,
Università di Milano, Ospedale Luigi Sacco, Milan, Italy
Received 21 April 2000/Returned for modification 24 August
2000/Accepted 15 December 2000
We studied the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 phenotypic and
genotypic profiles of a dual drug-resistant isolate (isolate 14aPost-DR) selected for zidovudine (ZDV) and lamivudine (3TC) resistance and then cultured in the presence of 3TC and a protease inhibitor: indinavir (IDV), ritonavir, or KNI-272. The IDV-treated virus was highly resistant to 3TC, ZDV, and IDV and accumulated protease mutations at positions M46I and V82F. A change from alanine to
valine was observed in 4 of 10 clones in the P2 position of the p7-p1
Gag-protease cleavage site, linked to position M46I in the dominant
viral quasispecies. Previous 3TC resistance did not impair the
development of additional mutations in the protease and Gag-protease
cleavage regions.
Current antiretroviral therapy
includes the combination use of reverse transcriptase (RT) inhibitors
and protease (PR) inhibitors (PIs) (6, 7, 19). Multiply
targeted therapies with agents active against both PR and RT enzymes
showed more benefits than monotherapy, but these clinical benefits have
been limited due to drug resistance and particularly multidrug
resistance (MDR) (1, 5, 8, 16, 22).
Sequential acquisition of mutations in the region that codes for viral
PR induces increased levels of resistance, and cross-resistance could
confer resistance to more than one other PI (3, 4, 13, 20, 27,
28). The overlap in the PI mutational pathway led to
cross-resistance to inhibitors actually used (K. Hertogs, S. Kemp, S. Bloor, V. Miller, S. Steszewski, J. Mellors, C. Van den Eynde, F. Peeters, B. Larder, and R. Pauwels, 2nd Int. Workshop on HIV Drug
Resistance and Treatment Strategies, Antivir. Ther. 3(Suppl.
1):49-50, 1998) when four amino acid substitutions were
examined (M46I, L63P, V82T, I84V) (2).
The selective pressure of indinavir (IDV) induces the early appearance
of primary mutations that confer resistance to this compound, i.e.,
mutation V82A (3, 4, 29), but the PI-specific "genetic
barrier" implies that three or more mutations are necessary for the
development of a high level of resistance (4). These resistant mutants often reveal a loss of fitness. The viral replication capacity is restored at the appearance of compensatory substitutions (L10I, M36I, M46I, L63P, or A71V), that, without interfering directly with PI binding, have been shown to increase the catalytic activity of
PR (21). Such mutations in the PR nonactive site increase viral fitness as a result of primary mutations that elicit phenotypic resistance (2, 12). The resistant strains display an
overlapping mutational pathway that results in cross-resistance to
several PIs (3). Some compensatory mutations map in the
substrate of the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) PR, i.e.,
the Gag-Pol polyprotein precursor cleavage sites (9).
Thus, the initial therapy could have an important role in future
therapeutic choices, while cross-resistance to additional compounds
should be always considered (25). With the aim of clarifying the in vitro appearance of PI MDR, we have studied the
evolution of HIV-1 PR genotypes and phenotypic changes during culture
of an HIV-1 strain resistant to both zidovudine (ZDV) and lamivudine
(3TC) either in the presence or in the absence of a single PI, e.g.,
IDV, ritonavir (RTV), or KNI-272. The third drug (a PI) was added in
order to achieve a more active antiviral regimen.
In the study described here we examined the in vitro susceptibility of
this viral isolate to RT inhibitors and PI, and its linkage to
Gag-protease cleavage site modifications at different time points of
the culture.
In vitro passage of a dual RT inhibitor-resistant HIV-1
isolate.
The HIV-1 strain used in this study was isolate 14aPost,
which was used after in vitro selection of resistance to both ZDV and
3TC and which then had five amino acid substitutions: D67N, K70R,
M184V, T215F, and K219Q (isolate 14aPost-DR) (23).
0095-1137/01/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/JCM.39.3.1124-1129.2001
Copyright © 2001, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
In Vitro Evolution of the Human Immunodeficiency
Virus Type 1 Gag-Protease Region and Maintenance of Reverse
Transcriptase Resistance following Prolonged Drug Exposure


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ABSTRACT
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TEXT
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Phenotypic pattern of MDR isolate.
Table
1 shows the drug susceptibilities of the
viruses in IDV-treated (MDR) and control flasks. Susceptibility tests
were done at day 60 and once a month after day 116. The drugs used were
ZDV, 3TC, IDV, RTV, and nelfinavir (NFV). Drug susceptibility tests
were carried out as described previously (23), and the cutoff values for the various inhibitors were derived from experiments with isolate 14a-Pre, which was obtained from an HIV-1-seropositive person before any antiretroviral treatment. In the presence of IDV the
dual drug-resistant isolate had a high level of resistance to 3TC
(IC50, >1 µM) at different time points, whereas it was moderately resistant to ZDV at day 0 (IC50, 0.563 µM) and
was found to be resistant (IC50, >10 µM) at the
subsequent time points. The susceptibility to IDV was tested at every
time point, and the isolate was sensitive only at day 0 but became
resistant from day 116 on (IC50, >0.1 µM).
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Occurrence of gag-pol mutations in passaged MDR
virus.
Table 2 shows the evolution
of the genotypic pattern of the PR and RT regions both in the absence
and in the presence of pharmacological pressure with IDV plus 3TC from
day 28 after the start of culture in the presence of IDV and 3TC.
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Phylogenetic analysis of viral genotypes at different time
points.
Phylogenetic analysis based on nucleotide alignment was
performed to study the evolution of the pol gene during the
in vitro treatment. Figure 1 shows the
tree obtained by the neighbor-joining method. The bootstrapping with
1,000 replicates gave high values for all the branches, indicating that
this tree is a good estimate of the true evolutionary relationships of
the pol sequences. The analysis revealed the appearance of
three new sequence clusters at day 144 that harbored the mutations 46I,
46I plus 82F, and p7-p1 (P2)V plus 46I, all of which were associated
with IDV resistance. Variants that contained the 82F and 46I mutations
rapidly dominated the viral population, which was highly homogeneous on
days 186, 221, and 256. This is indicated by the presence of one major
cluster in the tree (which included variants MDRd186, MDRd221, and
MDRd256) with almost no genetic diversity. Sequences from the untreated flask (isolates CTRLd221 and CTRLd256) clustered separately. These controls were more related to the treated virus (isolate MDRd28) at the
initial time point than to the treated virus sampled at the same time
(isolates MDRd221 and MDRd256). This suggests that in the absence of
selective drug pressure (and the absence of immunological pressure
active in vivo but not in vitro), the evolutionary force dragging the
genetic variability is lower.
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Evolution and linkage among mutations in the PR-coding region and
the Gag-Pol cleavage site.
In the present study, the evolution of
resistance in an HIV-1 strain resistant to two drugs (ZDV and 3TC) was
characterized by gradual increases in the IC50 of IDV,
accompanied by the emergence of variants that harbored the mutations
46I and 82F and A
V at the position (P2) of the p7-p1 cleavage site
added to a viral background with polymorphisms at codons 35, 37, 63, and 64 in the PR gene and mutations at codons 67, 70, 184, 211, 215, and 219 in the RT gene. The 14aPost-MDR virus had a high level of resistance to IDV and was cross-resistant to RTV and NFV but did not
accumulate other major mutations dominant in the viral population. To
determine whether the mutations in the RT and PR genes occurred in the
same HIV-1 genomes, we sequenced the 3' termini of the gag
and the pol regions of molecular clones from the viral
population at the initial time and on day 144, when phenotypic IDV
resistance became significant. The mutations that emerged in the PR
gene were harbored in the same molecules linked to the RT M184V and ZDV
resistance mutations.
Nucleotide sequence accession numbers. The nucleotide sequences obtained in the present study have been submitted to GenBank and have been given accession numbers AF152964 to AF152995.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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Support for this research was provided in part by the Progetto Terapia Antiretrovirale, Istituto Superiore di Sanità (Rome, Italy; grant 1997, 30A.01.43).
We thank Elizabeth L. Kaplan for manuscript editing, Matteo Romagnoni for precious collaboration, and Nicholas A. Kartsonis for helpful discussions and helping with the phylogenetic analysis.
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FOOTNOTES |
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* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Istituto di Malattie Infettive e Tropicali, Università di Milano, Ospedale Luigi Sacco, via GB Grassi 74, 20157 Milan, Italy. Phone: 011.39.02.39043350. Fax: 011.39.02.3560805. E-mail: rusconi{at}mailserver.unimi.it.
This report is dedicated to the memory of Alessandro Caporali.
Present address: Infectious Disease Unit, Massachusetts General
Hospital-East, Charlestown, MA 02129.
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