{"doi":"10.3389/fimmu.2020.561843","title":"Theta-Defensins Inhibit High-Risk Human Papillomavirus Infection Through Charge-Driven Capsid Clustering","abstract":"Persistent infection with high-risk human papillomavirus (hrHPV) genotypes results in a large number of anogenital and head and neck cancers worldwide. Although prophylactic vaccination coverage has improved, there remains a need to develop methods that inhibit viral transmission toward preventing the spread of HPV-driven disease. Defensins are a class of innate immune effector peptides that function to protect hosts from infection by pathogens such as viruses and bacteria. Previous work utilizing α and β defensins from humans has demonstrated that the α-defensin HD5 is effective at inhibiting the most common high-risk genotype, HPV16. A third class of defensin that has yet to be explored are θ-defensins: small, 18-amino acid cyclic peptides found in old-world monkeys whose unique structure makes them both highly cationic and resistant to degradation. Here we show that the prototype θ-defensin, rhesus theta defensin 1, inhibits hrHPV infection through a mechanism involving capsid clustering that inhibits virions from binding to cell surface receptor complexes.","journal":"Frontiers in Immunology","year":2020,"id":68615,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":22,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9458,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":365343,"name":"Wouter H. Segerink","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":363703,"name":"M Garcia","orcid":"0000-0003-2418-541X","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":273416,"name":"Daniel J. Fernandez","orcid":"0000-0002-9298-7150","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":273415,"name":"Ruben Prins","orcid":"0000-0003-0831-4189","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":365344,"name":"Kim P. Lühen","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":363704,"name":"Féline O. Voss","orcid":"0000-0002-9422-4296","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":307892,"name":"Diane M. Da Silva","orcid":"0000-0001-7317-4886","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":273417,"name":"W. Martin Kast","orcid":"0000-0003-2321-3159","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":273414,"name":"Joseph G. Skeate","orcid":"0000-0002-1765-5949","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":65,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T21:41:52.279368Z","pmid":"33154746","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}