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Our prior studies showed that certain cobalamins inhibit productive HIV-1 infection of primary cultures of blood lymphocytes and monocytes. We demonstrate here that this antiviral activity may be mediated by an inhibition of HIV-1 integrase, an enzyme required for productive infection. Purified recombinant HIV-1 integrase activity was inhibited in vitro by hydroxocobalamin (OH-Cbl), methylcobalamin (Me-Cbl), adenosylcobalamin (Ado-Cbl), and dicyanocobinamide (CN2-Cbi) with IC50 values of approximately 17, 17, 17, and 4 microM, respectively. The agents inhibited HIV-1 infection of cultured monocytes (IC50 values for OH-Cbl, Me-Cbl, Ado-Cbl, and CN2-Cbi of 6, 7, 4, and 1 microM, respectively) and of cultured lymphocytes (IC50 values of 60, 50, 60, and 11 microM, respectively). Experiments using cultured monocytes or lymphocytes demonstrated that OH-Cbl inhibited integration of HIV-1 DNA into cellular DNA. Thus, cobalamins and cobinamides represent novel inhibitors of HIV-1 integrase. These or related agents may be useful as anti-viral treatments that target HIV-1 integrase.

The enzymatic assay for deoxyribonucleoside triphosphates has been improved by using synthetic oligonucleotides of a carefully defined sequence as template primers for DNA polymerase. High backgrounds, which limit the sensitivity of the assay when calf thymus DNA or alternating copolymers are used as template primers, were eliminated with these oligonucleotide template primers. Sensitivity was further increased by designing the template primer to incorporate multiple labeled deoxyribonucleotides per limiting unlabeled deoxyribonucleotide. Each of several DNA polymerases exhibited unique reaction characteristics with the oligonucleotide template primers, which was attributed to the differing exonuclease activities associated with these various enzymes. Assay optimization therefore included matching the polymerase with the template primer to obtain the lowest background reaction and highest sensitivity. This modified assay is particularly well suited for keeping cell sample size to a minimum in experimental protocols which generate large numbers of data points or require careful timing of sampling. With this technique, we measured the levels of all four deoxyribonucleoside triphosphates in extracts from as few as 2 x 10(4) cultured cells.

A method to measure orthophosphate which contaminates samples of ATP was developed. Concentrations of orthophosphate as low as 0.4% of the ATP concentration were determined using a zinc-molybdate reagent [D. A. Bencini, J. R. Wild, and G. A. O'Donovan, Anal. Biochem. 132, 254-258 (1983)] and continuous spectrophotometric monitoring of chromophore formation. Since the rate of ATP hydrolysis was pseudo-first order and was slow compared to the rate of chromophore formation, the initial concentration of phosphate could be readily determined by extrapolation to zero time. The method is rapid and reproducible, and requires a single, stable reagent.