BioCentury
ARTICLE | Product R&D

Crystallin-clear ViewPoint

ViewPoint Therapeutics targets biophysical interactions in cataract and beyond

November 12, 2015 8:00 AM UTC

By exploring the biophysics of proteins with disease-associated mutations, a UCSF group has developed a way to screen for drugs that rescue the activity of non-enzymatic targets, and proved its value with molecular chaperones. After finding a compound that clears up cataracts, the team formed ViewPoint Therapeutics Inc. to commercialize its approach under the wing of JLABS, Johnson & Johnson's network of life sciences incubators.

The cataract study, published last week in Science, is the first application of what ViewPoint hopes will be a widely applicable strategy for targeting disease-associated mutations whose phenotypic effects are unclear. Leah Makley, CSO of ViewPoint and first author on the study, thinks the broad biophysical approach will open the doors to targets about which there is little information...