A non-infectious assay for detecting HIV Env-induced cell-cell fusion

Aim: To develop a non-infectious cell-cell fusion assay that can be used in a regular biological laboratory for high throughput screening for HIV entry inhibitors. Methods: Cells expressing HIV envelope glycoprotein gp160(as effector cells) and expressing receptor and co-receptor for HIV(as target cells),respectively,were mixed and cultured before the syncytium formation was recorded.Specific HIV entry inhibitors were used to validate the established detecting method.Results: We compared the syncytium formation activities of 10 combinations of 2 effector cell lines and 5 target cell lines,respectively,and found that mixing of CHO-WT and MT-2 cells could form syncytia obviously.Further studies showed that HIV entry inhibitors could inhibit the syncytium formation in a dose-dependent manner.Conclusion:We have developed a simple and non-infectious cell-cell fusion assay that can be used to screen for novel HIV entry inhibitors from natural and synthetic compound libraries.