Five years in the past, a small startup led by biotech veteran Michael Gilman introduced progress in opposition to a most cancers gene that had bedeviled drug builders for 40 years.
Known as Myc, it was one of many first so-called oncogenes ever found. It’s mutated or dysregulated in maybe 70% of all cancers. The problem is that the protein it creates is “intrinsically disordered” — which is chemist-speak for “spaghetti-esque”, missing a transparent pocket the place chemists can goal a deactivating molecule.
There are many proteins like this, identified mobile miscreants that persist as a result of scientists simply can’t discover a method to take them down. Gilman’s startup, Arrakis, had a radical resolution. It would skip the protein. Instead, the startup — which derives its title from the frontier planet in Dune, supply of life-extending “spice” — claimed it might do what chemists additionally thought near-impossible: Create molecules that intercept mRNA, stopping the protein from even being produced.
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