About the Authors

Iskra Tuero

Contributed equally to this work with: Iskra Tuero, Venkatramanan Mohanram

Affiliation Immune Biology of Retroviral Infection Section, Vaccine Branch, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, United States of America

Venkatramanan Mohanram

Contributed equally to this work with: Iskra Tuero, Venkatramanan Mohanram

Affiliation Immune Biology of Retroviral Infection Section, Vaccine Branch, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, United States of America

Thomas Musich

Affiliation Immune Biology of Retroviral Infection Section, Vaccine Branch, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, United States of America

Leia Miller

Affiliation Immune Biology of Retroviral Infection Section, Vaccine Branch, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, United States of America

Diego A. Vargas-Inchaustegui

Affiliation Immune Biology of Retroviral Infection Section, Vaccine Branch, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, United States of America

Thorsten Demberg

Affiliation Immune Biology of Retroviral Infection Section, Vaccine Branch, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, United States of America

David Venzon

Affiliation Biostatistics and Data Management Section, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, United States of America

Irene Kalisz

Affiliation Advanced Bioscience Laboratories, Inc., Rockville, Maryland, United States of America

V. S. Kalyanaraman

Affiliation Advanced Bioscience Laboratories, Inc., Rockville, Maryland, United States of America

Ranajit Pal

Affiliation Advanced Bioscience Laboratories, Inc., Rockville, Maryland, United States of America

Maria Grazia Ferrari

Affiliation Advanced Bioscience Laboratories, Inc., Rockville, Maryland, United States of America

Celia LaBranche

Affiliation Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina, United States of America

David C. Montefiori

Affiliation Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina, United States of America

Mangala Rao

Affiliation USMHRP, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Silver Spring, Maryland, United States of America

Monica Vaccari

Affiliation Animal Models and Retroviral Vaccines Section, Vaccine Branch, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, United States of America

Genoveffa Franchini

Affiliation Animal Models and Retroviral Vaccines Section, Vaccine Branch, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, United States of America

Susan W. Barnett

Affiliation Novartis Vaccines, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America

Marjorie Robert-Guroff

guroffm@mail.nih.gov

Affiliation Immune Biology of Retroviral Infection Section, Vaccine Branch, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, United States of America

Competing Interests

IK, RP and MGF are current employees and VSK is a past employee of Advanced BioScience Laboratories, Inc. SWB was an employee and shareholder of Novartis Vaccines when this work was conducted. She is currently an employee and shareholder of Glaxo Smith Kline, Cambridge, MA, USA. This does not alter our adherence to all PLOS Pathogens policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: MRG IT VM TM LM DAVI TD SWB. Performed the experiments: IT VM TD TM LM DAVI IK VSK RP MGF CL DCM MR. Analyzed the data: MRG IT VM TM LM DAVI TD CL DCM. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: SWB MV GF. Wrote the paper: MRG IT VM TM LM DAVI TD SWB CL. Performed statistical analysis of the study data: DV.