AUTHOR=Skeate Joseph G. , Segerink Wouter H. , Garcia Mauricio D. , Fernandez Daniel J. , Prins Ruben , Lühen Kim P. , Voss Féline O. , Da Silva Diane M. , Kast W. Martin TITLE=Theta-Defensins Inhibit High-Risk Human Papillomavirus Infection Through Charge-Driven Capsid Clustering JOURNAL=Frontiers in Immunology VOLUME=11 YEAR=2020 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/immunology/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2020.561843 DOI=10.3389/fimmu.2020.561843 ISSN=1664-3224 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.