The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) is seeking interested parties to license or co-develop GDNFOS peptides and non-coding RNAs as therapeutic agents for neurodegenerative diseases.
Chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) are hybrid proteins consisting of an antibody binding fragment fused to protein signaling domains that cause T-cells which express the CAR to become cytotoxic. Once activated, these cytotoxic T-cells can selectively eliminate the cells which they recognize via the antibody binding fragment of the CAR. By engineering a T-cell to express a CAR that is specific for a certain cell surface protein, it is possible to selectively target those cells for destruction. This is a promising new therapeutic approach known as adoptive cell therapy.
Despite several partially effective prophylactic vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 exist, patients worldwide still succumb to COVID-19. New therapeutics to treat this disease are still needed. Upon host invasion, a critical step in the pathogenesis of COVID-19 is intracellular replication of SARS-CoV-2 before viral particles invade nearby healthy cells. This triggers an extreme inflammatory response that may lead to acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) or transmission to another host.