BioCentury
ARTICLE | Discovery & Translation

Merck’s HIV reservoir-reducing compounds; plus an anti-IL-8 mAb for endometriosis and more

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March 2, 2023 1:49 AM UTC

Merck & Co. Inc. (NYSE:MRK) and Evotec AG (Xetra:EVT) presented in Science Translational Medicine a set of bifunctional HIV therapies, dubbed targeted activator of cell kill (TACK) molecules, that were optimized for simultaneous antiviral activity and selective elimination of infected CD4+ T cells from HIV-1 patients.

The TACK molecules cause HIV-infected T cell death by inducing premature viral protease activation, a secondary mechanism that has been observed with existing HIV-1 non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors, but requires drug concentrations that exceed approved doses...