Procept Inc., the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and HarvardUniversity were awarded a $3 million grant to further theirwork on developing compounds that inhibit replication of HIVusing advanced structure-based drug-design technologies,Cambridge, Mass.-based Procept announced Friday.

The four-year grant was awarded by the National CooperativeDrug Discovery Group of the National Institutes of Health.Procept's goal is to develop new drugs that will block CD4, aprotein found on the surface of T cells and the primary entrypoint for HIV. Most other approaches target the AIDS virusitself, said Stanley Erck, Procept's president and chief executiveofficer.

Harvard will focus on structural biology and Dana-Farber ondissection of the CD4 molecule, Erck said.

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