Haplogen’s novel antiviral target partnered with Evotec published in “Nature”

Evotec AG  has announced a promising research result in the field of picornaviruses published in a scientific article by Dr Thijn Brummelkamp, the co-founder of Haplogen GmbH (“Haplogen”), a biotech company based in Vienna, Austria, that develops antiviral therapeutics in a co-owned partnership with Evotec.

The article, now available in the online edition of Nature (http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature21032), describes the work performed at Dr Brummelkamp’s laboratory at the Netherlands Cancer Institute.

The study revealed the unexpected role of a bacterial clearance pathway in the picornavirus life cycle and further demonstrated that a key enzyme used by the virus to evade clearance (PLA2G16) represents a first-in-class drug target for a broad range of picornaviruses.

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