Within three years after the discovery of HIV as the causative agent of AIDS, scientists identified the CD4 molecule as the primary cellular receptor for HIV. They believed the virus entered target cells by an initial binding event between the envelope glycoprotein (Env) molecules on the viral membrane and CD4 molecules on the target cell surface. Yet as early as 1986, it became clear that the Env-CD4 interaction was not sufficient to promote the fusion reaction that results in HIV infection. Research teams searched for a coreceptor for roughly a decade. In 1996, a research team from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) led by Edward A. Berger, chief of the molecular structure section, Laboratory of Viral Diseases, discovered the HIV coreceptor they dubbed "fusin" (later CXCR4); this molecule allowed HIV infection in CD4-expressing nonhuman cells through fusion with Env-mediated cells, and it blocked infection and fusion ...
Virology
HOT RECEPTION: From left, NIAID investigators Edward Berger, Paul Kennedy, Christopher Broder, and Yu Feng helped to break open the field of HIV coreceptor research with their discovery of fusin. Comments by Edward A. Berger, Laboratory of Viral Diseases, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Within three years after the discovery of HIV as the causative agent of AIDS, scientists identified the CD4 molecule as the primary cellular receptor for HIV. They believed the virus ent
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