“…According to recent reports, the V3 analogous region of SIVm~o does not contain neutralizing epitopes. Instead, in addition to a conformation-dependent epitope (Kent et al, 1992), a neutralizing epitope was located in the V2 equivalent region comprising amino acid positions 171 to 189 (Kent et at., 1992;Benichou et al, 1992) corresponding to peptides 15 and 16. Interestingly, only the animal receiving the recombinant VV with two amino acid changes in peptide 15 exhibited a reactivity against both peptides, whereas the macaques immunized with sequence-homologous virus-derived gpl30 reacted only In conclusion, the administration of a virus-derived and a recombinant SIVm, , gpl30 vaccine has revealed that the antibody recognition patterns vary considerably.…”