James Binley, Ph.D.

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Research Focus

Dr. Binley has spent his career working on the antibody response to HIV, with a particular interest in vaccine development. In 1991 he made phage displayed antibody libraries from HIV+ patient bone marrow. He then “panned” (selected) these libraries against various antigens to try to discover new broadly neutralizing monoclonal antibodies (bNAbs). These bNAbs are important for vaccine development, because they provide a blueprint for vaccines that aim to induce similar bNAbs to fend off infection. In 1995, Dr. Binley became heavily involved in research on the impact of newly emerging high active antiviral drug therapies that can reduce the levels of HIV in the blood of infected people to below detectable levels. Later, he began working on an HIV vaccine to elicit bNAbs. By this time, it had become increasingly clear that bNAbs uniquely recognize the native form of the HIV spike protein, but most antibodies, including those induced by vaccines up to that point, could not bind effectively. Accordingly, it became increasingly clear that for vaccines to be effective, they would need to look more like native spikes.

Most HIV vaccine candidates are “subunit” in nature, in that they express the isolated spike protein only. The problem was that these isolated spikes were unstable. Recognizing this challenge, in 2000, Dr. Binley successfully designed stabilized mutant “SOS” spikes. This was a career highlight and a turning point in the HIV-1 vaccine field: Dr. Binley’s SOS mutation became the foundation or “spine” of hundreds of studies in the ensuing 20 years by himself and others including a current phase I vaccine trial.

Over the last 20 years, Dr. Binley has largely been applying the SOS mutation to a virus-like particle (VLP) HIV vaccine platform, based on the premise that VLPs carry spikes that look exactly like those on the real virus (unlike subunit SOS spikes) – in essence, this is a Jennerian approach, based on the long history of particle-based vaccines. However, for HIV, the challenge is by no means straightforward. Not only do VLPs need to present native spikes, they must be able to induce antibodies to conserved parts of these spikes that are shaped by different HIV strains. Only then can hey induce bNAbs that can protect against any of the massively diverse strains that we might encounter. Accordingly, Dr. Binley is developing carefully modified VLPs and is now testing them in various models. We hope that this will be the long awaited first step into a rational vaccine approach that can consistently induce bNAbs and which therefore could be a major step in halting this pandemic which has claimed the lives of an estimated 33M people over the last 30 years.

Dr. Binley has recently begun working on SARS-CoV-2 to understand the impact of pre-existing immunity to other coronaviruses and to try to make a universal coronavirus vaccine that might protect against other newly emerging coronaviruses. This might be compared to efforts to develop a universal flu vaccine to replace the annual (seasonal) vaccine.

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Education

Ph.D. in Immunology/HIV, The Scripps Research Institute, 1995
B.S. in Genetics, University of Sheffield, UK, 1991

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Professional Experience

2014 – Present, Current Professor, San Diego BioMed
2010 – 2014 Associate Member Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies
2004 – 2009 Assistant Member, Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies
2001 – 2004 Staff Scientists, The Scripps Research Institute
2000 – 2001 Instructor, Weill Medical College of Cornell University
1999 – 2000 Research Scientist, Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center
1995 – 1999 Postdoctoral Fellow, Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center

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Professional Activities

2014 – Present Member, San Diego BioMed IRB & IBC Committees
2011 U.S. Patent: “Enzymatic methods for a neutralizing antibody vaccine for HIV-1” Binley, JM
2005 U.S. Patent: “Human Immunodeficiency Virus Envelope glycoprotein mutants and uses thereof” Binley, JM, Sanders, RW, Lu, M, Schulke, N, Maddon, PJ, Olson, WC, Moore, JP
2010 – Present Journal of Virology Editorial Board
2005 – Present NIH HIV Vaccine, HIVRAD and HIV-D Study Sections Ad Hoc Reviewer
2004 – Present Member, American Society for Microbiology
2002 – 2014 Scientific Coordinator, Neutralizing Antibody Consortium, IAVI
2001 – 2012 Consultant, Progenics Pharmaceuticals, Inc.