Professor Paul Lehner (CIMR) has won the GSK Discovery Fast Track Challenge, designed to accelerate the translation of academic research into novel therapies.
Congratulations to Professor Paul Lehner (Cambridge Institute for Medical Research) who has won the GSK Discovery Fast Track Challenge, designed to accelerate the translation of academic research into novel therapies.
Professor Lehner will collaborate with GSK to develop an inhibitor for HUSH (Human Silencing Hub), an epigenetic transcriptional repressor complex identified by the Lehner lab last year using forward genetic screens in haploid human cells.
HUSH results in derepression of retroviruses integrated into heterochromatin and may have a role in the silencing of non-integrating human viruses.
The hope is that a HUSH inhibitor would provide a powerful mechanism to ‘activate’ repressed, latent human viruses, for subsequent killing by either the immune system or by antiviral agents.