Science spotlight: An antidote to reverse anticoagulants, two ocular gene therapies, and more

A team of scientists from Switzerland, Australia and Portugal reported in Nature Biotechnology a method to turn off anticoagulant drugs on demand.

For proof of concept, the authors made a reversible thrombin inhibitor. The therapy consists of two peptide-nucleic acid (PNA) conjugates that bind distinct sites on thrombin and must hybridize with each other to drive inhibition. That dependence on hybridization for activity created an opportunity to interrupt inhibition with a PNA “antidote” complementary to one of the nucleic acid sequences in the pair and capable of outcompeting the other. ...