Team­ing up with NIH, Vi­iV buys in­to the next big thing in HIV: an­ti­bod­ies

Weeks af­ter tak­ing over from John Pot­tage, Kim Smith — Vi­iV Health­care’s new­ly mint­ed head of R&D — has found a new HIV treat­ment ap­proach to cham­pi­on and do some heavy lift­ing around.

The GSK sub­sidiary has li­censed a “broad­ly neu­tral­iz­ing an­ti­body” from the NIH that promis­es to rec­og­nize and block the en­try of mul­ti­ple HIV strains in­to healthy CD4+ T cells. By bind­ing to a spe­cif­ic site known as gp120 on the sur­face of the virus, N6LS is en­gi­neered to keep them out and an­nul any chance of repli­ca­tion in­side cells — which can work as ei­ther pro­phy­lax­is or ther­a­py.

Endpoints News

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.