ZYMERON CORPORATION — Department of Health and Human Services SBIR Phase I: NIAID

Description

HIV disease continues to be a serious health issue for the whole worldCurrentlyantiretroviral therapyARTis a widely accepted treatment to HIV infected patientswhich reduces morbidity and mortality and the potential for HIV transmission by suppressing viral replicationHowevertreatment outcomes of ART are limited due to the high adherence requirement and occurrence of drug resistanceProteolysis targeting chimeraPROTACtechnology has been suggested as a novel drug development strategy which take advantage of ubiquitin proteasome pathwayUbiquitination is a post translational modificationwhere target proteins labeled with mono or poly ubiquitin and delivered to the proteasome for degradationSuch a pathway exists widely in mammalian cytosol and nucleusThe synthetic PROTAC molecules could capture target protein and hijacking Eligase to deliver target protein to proteasome for degradationZymeron develops a series of formulation to targeted deliver PROTAC molecules into host cells and induce the in vivo degradation of vital HIV proteinwhich could further eliminate biological function of target protein and consequently inhibit HIV replication or remission