Researchers from Jiangsu Hansoh Pharmaceutical Group Co. Ltd. and Shanghai Hansoh Biomedical Co. Ltd. have disclosed MAP kinase-activated protein kinase 2 (MK2) inhibitors reported to be useful for the treatment of cancer, inflammatory disorders, atherosclerosis, diabetes and fibrosis, as well as metabolic and autoimmune diseases.

Gri Bio Inc. reported data on its type 2 natural killer T (NKT) cell activator GRI-0803 at the Autoimmunity Conference hosted by FASEB earlier in August. The company is developing GRI-0803 in autoimmune diseases, with an initial focus of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE).

Human schistosomiasis is caused by parasitic flatworms in the genus Schistosoma, with the three major species that cause this disease being S. mansoni, S. haematobium, and S. japonicum. In the current study, researchers from University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio presented preclinical data for novel oxamniquine (OXA) derivatives as potential new candidates for the treatment of this neglected tropical disease.

It has gone unnoticed in HIV research until now, but a transcriptomic analysis has detected a molecule that could kill this virus. Scientists at a U.S. military research institute laboratory have found a common factor in human cells that inhibited the replication of HIV-1 in people living with the virus. “Without any manipulation of cells in people with HIV, we have found a host factor that is inhibiting HIV in vivo,” the senior author Rasmi Thomas, chief of the Laboratory of Integrative Multiomics at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, told BioWorld. Using single cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq), the study published on Aug. 2, 2023, in Science Translational Medicine identified this host factor as prothymosin α, a protein isolated from the thymus in 1966 and described in 1984.