Biotech Values

[DewDiligence]

VRTX’s caspase-1 enzyme, VX-765, might be useful against AIDS, researchers say:

http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/12/19/us-aids-science-idINBRE9BI14H20131219

Instead of actively killing immune system cells known as CD4 T cells, much of the damage done by HIV occurs when the virus tries to invade these cells and fails, triggering an innate immune response that causes the cells to self-destruct in a fiery kind of cell suicide known as pyroptosis.

The findings, published simultaneously in the scientific journals Science and Nature, also suggest that an experimental anti-inflammatory drug owned by Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc that has already been tested in people with epilepsy could be repurposed as a possible new treatment for AIDS. …Dr Warner Greene of the Gladstone Institutes, an independent biomedical research nonprofit based in San Francisco, …produced the research in both papers.

… "This idea that CD4 depletion is more of a cellular suicide than it is a murder by the virus is a new and important concept," Greene said.

… Gladstone is in talks with Vertex to gain access to the drug for clinical trials as a potential new treatment for HIV infection.