BioCentury
ARTICLE | Translation in Brief

Preclinical Roundup: CureVac gets CEPI funding for 2019 coronavirus; plus blockade of CD47-SIRPA for atherosclerosis, Stanford and IBM-CDHI

February 1, 2020 2:05 AM UTC
Updated on Feb 3, 2020 at 9:13 PM UTC

The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and CureVac AG are extending a February 2019 collaboration to include a vaccine against the 2019-nCoV acute respiratory disease. The company will receive up to an additional $8.3 million in initial funding from the non-profit, which is also supporting vaccine programs against the virus at Moderna Inc. (NASDAQ:MRNA), Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:INO) and The University of Queensland (see “The Race Is On to Develop Therapies and Vaccine for the Coronavirus Outbreak”).

A Michigan State University and Stanford University team including Forty Seven Inc. (NASDAQ:FTSV) co-founders Nicholas Leeper and Irving Weissman showed in Nature Nanotechnology that delivery of a compound inhibiting SHP-1 -- activated by SIRPA interaction with CD47 -- in carbon nanotubes could reduce plaque burden in atherosclerosis. The nanotherapy accumulated in atherosclerotic plaques, which contain a necrotic core of post-apoptotic cells that would normally be cleared by macrophages via efferocytosis to prevent inflammation; as well as in macrophages and monocytes. In a mouse model of high-fat diet-induced atherosclerosis, the nanotherapy increased efferocytosis and reduced plaque size and vascular inflammation...