Figure 5.

Protection from HIV-1 infection following pre-treatment of the cervical explant with PVP-coated AgNPs. a) Cervical explants were exposed to 0.1 or 0.15 mg/mL PVP-coated AgNPs in RPMI + 10% FCS media for 20 minutes. After thoroughly washing extracellular PVP-coated AgNPs from the cervical explant and after 1 minute, 24 h, 48 h and 72 h, cell-free virus (HIV-1_IIIB) [(5 × 10⁵ TCID₅₀)] was added to the upper chamber. To verify the neutralization of HIV-1 transmission, we cultured the indicator cells (MT-2) in the lower chamber and evaluated inhibition of the HIV-1 infection. b) Cervical explants were exposed to HIV-1 in the absence of PVP-coated AgNPs as a control and to 0.1 or 0.15 mg/mL of PVP-coated AgNPs as pretreatment. Graphs show values of the means ± standard deviations from three separate experiments. Graphs were created using the SigmaPlot 10.0 software.