News Story

Our experimental drug is like a secret agent that finds and latches onto its target within the cell and destroys it,”says Professor Levon Khachigian, a molecular biologist and the senior author of a paper published last month in Nature Biotechnology.“It is a pre-programmed ‘molecular assassin’."

That target is c-Jun, an important disease-causing master regulator gene, which appears to be involved in a host of conditions. The experimental drug works unlike anything currently on the market, at least in pre-clinical models, by switching off this “godfather gene”,explains Professor Khachigian, who is based inthe Centre for Vascular Research in the Faculty of Medicine. “We are entering a new era of ‘smart drug’ therapy and this work has potential to treat a wide spectrum of diseases."

Full Article on Page 5 of the August UNIKEN