Why four companies are chasing the same immune chokepoint No VAV1 drug has reached approval, and four are now in development. Insilico’s AI-designed degrader makes its case on where the molecule does not go. Written byAndrea Corona

Why four companies are chasing the same immune chokepoint No VAV1 drug has reached approval, and four are now in development. Insilico’s AI-designed degrader makes its case on where the molecule does not go. Written byAndrea Corona https://www.drugdiscoverynews.com/why-four-companies-are-chasing-the-same-immune-chokepoint-17645 The protein at the center of one of immunology’s most crowded new races was considered undruggable until a few years ago. VAV1, a guanine nucleotide exchange factor expressed almost exclusively in immune cells, relays signals from the T-cell and B-cell receptors into activation, proliferation, cytoskeletal remodeling, and cytokine release. “VAV1 sits at a choke point of adaptive immunity,” said Alex Zhavoronkov, founder and co-CEO of Insilico Medicine, the generative AI drug discovery company that nominated an oral VAV1 degrader as a preclinical candidate on October 13th. Because expression is restricted to immune cells, removing the protein could dampen pathogenic lymphocyte activity across several autoimmune diseases while sparing most other tissues.