Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Wuhan Institute of Virology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have synthesized amide compounds reported to be useful for the treatment of dengue virus infection, skin inflammation, inflammatory joint disease, inflammatory bowel disease and autoimmune disease.
Bacterial abortive infection is a defense mechanism by which an infected bacterial cell enters dormancy or dies to limit phage replication and protect the clonal population. Recent studies observed that CRISPR RNA-guided adaptive immune systems that target RNA also cause abortive-infection phenotypes by activating indiscriminate nucleases.
Researchers at the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology’s Center for Genomic Regulation (CRG) and Pulmobiotics Ltd. have used one bacterium to fight another. In mouse models, the team used engineered Mycoplasma pneumoniae to treat Pseudomonas aeruginosa, the chief culprit in ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP).
Debiopharm International SA has identified enoyl-(acyl-carrier protein) reductase FabI (Acinetobacter baumannii) inhibitors reported to be useful for the treatment of bacterial infections and hospital-acquired pneumonia.
Shanghai Qilu Pharmaceutical Research and Development Centre Ltd. has presented HBeAg (hepatitis B virus; HBV) and/or HBsAg (HBV) secretion inhibitors reported to be useful for the treatment of HBV infections.
Researchers from Therapyx Inc. and Intravacc BV assessed the potential of intranasal administration of a novel gonococcal vaccine candidate consisting of outer membrane vesicles (OMVs) and microsphere (ms)-encapsulated interleukin-12 (IL-12 ms). It was previously demonstrated that female mice can be immunized intravaginally with gonococcal OMVs plus IL-12 ms to induce anti-gonococcal antibodies and resistance to genital tract challenge with live Neisseria gonorrhoeae.