GlaxoSmithKline Drug Discovery and Development ...( broken both by the acid in a patient'...),Health

A cancer specialist, Alan C. Sartorelli, Ph.D., has worked with purine nucleosides for years, as several of them are used as chemotherapeutic therapies for cancer patients. GSK has awarded him $100,000 for his work.

"We have designed and will synthesize purine nucleoside analogs in which the chemical linkage between the sugar analog and the purine base is resistant to stomach acid and purine nucleoside phosphorylase," said Dr. Sartorelli, the Alfred Gilman professor of pharmacology at Yale University School of Medicine. "Hopefully these agents will lead to new drugs that will be more potent and effective at inhibition of the AIDS virus."

Gene Therapy: A New Approach to Treating AIDS?

Still in the very early stages, gene therapy is an exciting area of research in the fight against HIV and AIDS. Researchers are studying a concept, called gene silencing, that has been used in animals and plants. In humans, it's called RNA interference (RNAi). The idea is to interfere with the molecular capability of cells to be infected by HIV by blocking the synthesis of one of the cellular proteins a coreceptor that is necessary for HIV entry into human cells, but not necessary for normal functioning of immune cells. A different approach is to interfere directly with the capability of the virus to grow in human cells. Nan-Sook Lee, Ph.D., has been given a GSK award of $50,000 for conducting research in that area.

"Although several types of RNA gene therapies have been developed and shown to inhibit HIV-1 replication in mammalian cell cultures, in many cases they have been ineffective in animals," said Dr. Lee, senior research fellow in the department of molecular biology at the Beckman Research Institute of the City of Hope, Duarte, Calif. "We hope to
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Contact: Elaine Salewske
esalewske@pcipr.com
312-558-1770
Public Communications Inc.
1-Oct-2002