Kimer Med Founded to Develop the DRACO Antiviral Strategy

Today's good news is that a biotech startup, Kimer Med, has been founded to develop the DRACO approach to defeating viral infections. Those of us who have been following developments in antiviral technologies that might be applied to persistent infections relevant to aging, such as cytomegalovirus (CMV) and other herpesviruses, may recall a burst of interest in DRACO some years ago, particularly the research crowdfunding efforts in 2015 and 2016. DRACO (Double-stranded RNA Activated Caspase Oligomerizer) works by selectively killing cells that exhibit one of the distinctive signs of viral replication. This replication produces long double-stranded RNA, whereas mammalian cells only produce short double-stranded RNA in the normal course of events. It is possible to deliver a form of molecule into the cell that interacts with only long double-stranded RNA and triggers cell death via caspase induced apoptosis as a result, depriving the viral particles of their factory. The fine details of the approach are outlined in the original 2011 paper, and DRACO has been proven to do quite well by a few different research groups in several different animal models of viral infection. There are two reasons as why this is interesting. Firstly, it can be applied, with little additional work on a per-case basis, to a broad range of virus types, becoming a potentially near-universal antiviral platform. The economics of such a technology look very good in comparison to most other ant...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Healthy Life Extension Community Source Type: blogs