Studies in a Murine Model Confirm the Safety of Griffithsin and Advocate Its Further Development as a Microbicide Targeting HIV-1 and Other Enveloped Viruses

Kouokam, Joseph Calvin; Lasnik, Amanda B.; Palmer, Kenneth E.

Previous studies have shown that an intravaginal dose of 2 mg/kg GRFT is able to inhibit HSV-2, and we anticipate a similar dose to be used in the case of mucosal prevention of HIV-1. Therefore, we evaluated the toxicity of 2 mg/kg GRFT after intravaginal administration. We were also interested in assessing the toxicity of 2 mg/kg GRFT, administered systemically i.e., subcutaneously or intraperitoneally, to determine the potential adverse effects of GRFT in case of absorption. As shown in Figure 6A , the animals displayed similar body weights throughout the experiment, whether treated with GRFT or PBS, regardless of the administration route. The same observation was made for the relative spleen weights ( Figure 6B ). In accordance to these results, no activation of spleen B-or T-cells was found after GRFT administration regardless of the route, as evaluated using B220 and CD69 markers, respectively ( Figure 6C,D) . These results further demonstrated that GRFT has an excellent safety profile as a microbicide.