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Ventus has overcome medicinal chemistry challenges to advance a first inhibitor of cGAS-STING into the clinic, as drug developers build the case for novel anti-inflammatory agents in autoimmune diseases including lupus.
In late 2012, researchers showed how the cGAS-STING pathway detects pathogenic DNA to guard against viral and bacterial invaders. A decade on, Ventus Therapeutics is ready to test a first inhibitor of these targets, hoping to alleviate the effects of autoimmune diseases that may be driven by the same inflammatory response. A phase I trial of the cGAS antagonist VENT-03 will assess the safety of the novel anti-inflammatory in healthy volunteers, and subsequent trials are planned in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and in systemic sclerosis, complex and hard to treat autoimmune diseases.