Complementary and synergistic activities of anti-V3, CD4bs and CD4i antibodies derived from a single individual can cover a wide range of HIV-1 strains

•Many MAbs against V3, CD4bs, and CD4i epitopes were isolated from a single patient.•A set of these MAbs has neutralizing and ADCC activities against various viruses.•Combination of anti-V3 and CD4bs MAbs showed a synergistic neutralization.•Induction of NAbs to multiple epitopes could be a vaccine strategy for HIV-1.

Antibodies with modest neutralizing activity and narrow breadth are commonly elicited in HIV-1. Here, we evaluated the complementary and synergistic activities of a set of monoclonal antibodies (MAb) isolated from a single patient, directed to V3, CD4 binding site (CD4bs), and CD4 induced (CD4i) epitopes. Despite low somatic hypermutation percentages in the variable regions, these MAbs covered viral strains from subtypes B, C, A and CRF01_AE and transmitted/founder viruses in terms of binding, neutralizing and antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity (ADCC) activities. In addition, a combination of the anti-V3 and CD4bs MAbs showed a synergistic effect over the neutralization of HIV-1JR-FL. A humoral response from a single patient covered a wide range of viruses by complementary and synergistic activities of antibodies with different specificities. Inducing a set of narrow neutralizing antibodies, easier to induce than the broadly neutralizing antibodies, could be a strategy for developing an effective vaccine against HIV-1.