Volume 18 Issue 11, November 2019

Nearly ten compounds from zebrafish screens are in or about to enter the clinic, and zebrafish 'avatars' are gaining traction as a tool to guide treatment plans for patients with cancers and rare diseases.

Drug development for treatment of hepatitis B virus infection has trailed behind that for infection with the related hepatitis C virus, but encouraging progress has been made in recent years. Fanning and colleagues review advances in hepatitis B therapies and challenges for their development, including antiviral and immune-boosting strategies that could be part of combination strategies to achieve functional cure.

Nucleic acid sensors (NASs) are essential for the preservation of cellular and organismal homeostasis, with dysregulated NAS signalling contributing to the pathology of a variety of conditions, including infectious diseases, autoimmune disorders and malignancy. Here, Galluzzi and colleagues discuss recent progress in the development of therapeutic NAS modulators and highlight obstacles faced in their clinical development.

Adhesion G protein-coupled receptors (aGPCRs) have been linked to multiple diseases, but no therapeutics targeting this GPCR family are yet in clinical trials, in part because a lack of understanding of the atypical features of aGPCRs has hampered the development of molecules targeting them. In this Perspective, Bassilana and colleagues discuss how recent advances in aGPCR biology could provide the basis for a framework to approach the unique challenges of drug discovery programmes targeting these receptors.