While people living with HIV can lead virtually normal lives thanks to antiretroviral therapy (ART), HIV persists in a latent state within cellular reservoirs that scientists do not know how to eliminate. “Transcription is a critical step in the viral life cycle. … But there are currently no drugs suppressing HIV transcription, and that may be one of the reasons why current antiretroviral therapy is not curative,” Melanie Ott told the audience at the 13th IAS Conference on HIV Science this week in Kigali, Rwanda.

The OX40/OX40L costimulatory pathway is crucial for effective T-cell activation and is inducibly expressed in response to immunological stimulation. Targeting OX40L has demonstrated safety and efficacy in preclinical studies using nonhuman primate models of kidney and heart transplantation.

Degradation is a therapeutic strategy that could offer possibilities to get at currently undruggable target proteins. In targeted degradation, compounds induce interactions between a target protein and a protein that can tag the target for degradation. In principle, there are several pathways that could be used for such tagging; the most attention has gone to ubiquitin ligases, in particular cereblon, a protein that is part of a ubiquitin ligase complex and the target of several approved drugs.

Unnatural Products Inc. notched another collaboration by signing on with Argenx SE in a multitarget research collaboration. Unnatural Products, which is getting up-front, near-term payments and R&D funding, could end up with about $1.5 billion in milestones and options payments plus tiered royalties on net sales.

Agonists of immune checkpoint modulators for treating autoimmune and inflammatory disorders have shown high potential in immunotherapy. P-selectin glycoprotein ligand 1 (PSGL-1) is known to exert immune checkpoint regulator functions in T cells aside from its classic role as an adhesion molecule involved in leukocyte trafficking.

A healthy life for a healthy heart is a popular saying. However, even when following good habits, heart health can be already compromised from the very earliest stages of development. Maternal cells reach the embryo through the placenta contributing to its normal formation. So, just as the mother helps form a functional heart, she can also induce a condition that may not appear until adulthood.

Evaxion A/S has added a new vaccine program, named EVX-B4, to its pipeline for prevention of group A Streptococcus (GAS) infections. Invasive GAS infections can cause diseases such as sepsis, toxic shock, rheumatic heart disease and necrotizing fasciitis.