{"doi":"10.3390/v12020199","title":"An Engineered Microvirin Variant with Identical Structural Domains Potently Inhibits Human Immunodeficiency Virus and Hepatitis C Virus Cellular Entry","abstract":"Microvirin (MVN) is one of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) entry inhibitor lectins, which consists of two structural domains sharing 35% sequence identity and contrary to many other antiviral lectins, it exists as a monomer. In this study, we engineered an MVN variant, LUMS1, consisting of two domains with 100% sequence identity, thereby reducing the chemical heterogeneity, which is a major factor in eliciting immunogenicity. We determined carbohydrate binding of LUMS1 through NMR chemical shift perturbation and tested its anti-HIV activity in single-round infectivity assay and its anti-hepatitis C virus (HCV) activity in three different assays including HCVcc, HCVpp, and replicon assays. We further investigated the effect of LUMS1 on the activation of T helper (Th) and B cells through flow cytometry. LUMS1 showed binding to α(1-2)mannobiose, the minimum glycan epitope of MVN, potently inhibited HIV-1 and HCV with EC50 of 37.2 and 45.3 nM, respectively, and showed negligible cytotoxicity with CC50 > 10 µM against PBMCs, Huh-7.5 and HepG2 cells, and 4.9 µM against TZM-bl cells. LUMS1 did not activate Th cells, and its stimulatory effect on B cells was markedly less as compared to MVN. Together, with these effects, LUMS1 represents a potential candidate for the development of antiviral therapies.","journal":"Viruses","year":2020,"id":64610,"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":29,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9425,"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":343198,"name":"Amina Qadir","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":341715,"name":"Jaewon Yang","orcid":"0000-0002-3398-569X","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":341716,"name":"Izaz Ahmad","orcid":"0000-0002-8322-9278","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":343199,"name":"Hina Zahid","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":341717,"name":"Shaper Mirza","orcid":"0000-0002-6651-6101","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":68295,"name":"Marc P. Windisch","orcid":"0000-0003-1874-8503","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":341718,"name":"Syed Shahzad‐ul‐Hussan","orcid":"0000-0001-7736-1072","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":341714,"name":"Munazza Shahid","orcid":"0000-0002-5572-4925","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":35,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T21:12:58.081635Z","pmid":"32054060","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":[]}