Ginkgo Bioworks Inc. has received a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a novel cell-based technology for improving protein therapeutics delivery for patients in low- and middle-income countries.
Hookipa Pharma Inc. has received clearance from the FDA for its IND application for HB-500, a novel arenaviral therapeutic vaccine for the treatment of HIV.
At the 30th Annual Congress of the European Society for Gene and Cell Therapy in Brussels this week, researchers presented both preclinical and clinical strategies for applying gene therapy to a functional HIV cure. At a Wednesday session on Infectious Diseases & Vaccines, Alessio Nahmad, of Tabby Therapeutics Ltd., described using B cells edited to express broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs) 3BNC117 to deliver high titers of antibodies in mice.
Transimmune AG has been awarded a $5 million investment from the Bill & Melinda Gates Strategic Investment Fund that will be used to leverage Transimmune’s physiologically induced dendritic cells (phDCs) to enhance the potency of mRNA vaccines in infectious diseases. The initial focus will be on a therapeutic vaccine for people with HIV.
Blood cancer drug venetoclax could potentially be used to deplete HIV latently infected cells and delay viral rebound, leading to a potential cure for HIV, according to a study from researchers in Australia who tested the drug in humanized mice models.
Exavir Therapeutics Inc. has received a US$3 million award from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a division of the National Institutes of Health, to support the development of XVIR-110.
Researchers from Shandong University and colleagues presented the characterization of [I] as the most active compound from a series of novel diarypyridimine derivatives intended to overcome resistance to NNRTI-resistant HIV-1 strains. The compound displayed EC50 values of 0.0010 and 0.18 µM against HIV IIIB and RES056 strains, respectively.
Researchers from the U.S. National Institutes of Health and collaborators recently conducted a study investigating the mechanisms of HIV-1 resistance to integrase strand transfer inhibitors (INSTIs), such as the approved drug dolutegravir (DTG). They focused on understanding the mechanisms of resistance caused by mutations at positions 138, 140, and 148 and analyzed combinations of the mutations E138K, G140A/S, and Q148H/K/R, all conferring resistance to INSTIs.
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.
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