Date: 2017-01-12
Type of information: Publication of results in a medical journal
phase: preclinical
Announcement: publication of results in Nature
Company: Haplogen (Austria)
Product:
Action mechanism:
Disease: picornavirus infections
Therapeutic area: Infectious diseases
Country:
Trial details:
Latest
news: * On January 12, 2017, Haplogen announced a research result in the field of picornaviruses published in a scientific article by Dr Thijn Brummelkamp, the co-founder of Haplogen a biotech company based in Vienna, Austria, that develops antiviral therapeutics in a co-owned partnership with Evotec. The article published in Nature describes the work performed at Dr Brummelkamp’s laboratory at the Netherlands Cancer Institute (“PLA2G16 represents a switch between entry and clearance of Picornaviridae”, Jacqueline Staring, Eleonore von Castelmur, Vincent A Blomen, Lisa G. van den Hengel, Markus Brockmann, Jim
Baggen, Hendrik Jan Thibaut, Joppe Nieuwenhuis, Hans Janssen, Frank van Kuppeveld, Anastassis
Perrakis, Jan E. Carette & Thijn R. Brummelkamp ; Nature (2017). The study revealed the unexpected role of a bacterial clearance pathway in the picornavirus life cycle and further demonstrated that a key enzyme used by the virus to evade clearance
(PLA2G16) represents a first-in-class drug target for a broad range of picornaviruses. The picornavirus family leads to more frequent human infections than any other virus family and causes diseases such as the common cold and polio. Aided with a set of elegant haploid genetic screening experiments, first author Jacqueline Staring and coworkers unravelled a novel aspect of the molecular process responsible for how picornaviruses infect their human host cells. Inhibition of PLA2G16, a cellular and drugable enzyme, surrenders picornavirus particles to a clearance mechanism normally associated with bacterial infections. Animals in which the enzyme was inactivated were protected against infection whilst otherwise being healthy and fertile.
Haplogen holds the exclusive rights to use PLA2G16 against viral infections. In a partnership with Evotec, announced in November 2012, it has developed novel inhibitor compounds, which it anticipates to enter pre clinical development in the course of 2017.
