Bold Therapeutics partners with academia to study BOLD-100 as COVID-19 therapy

Canadian clinical-stage biotech Bold Therapeutics says it has initiated a research partnership with researchers from the University of Ottawa to explore the potential utility of BOLD-100, under development as an anti-cancer drug, as a novel antiviral agent.

"We will be using our lentiviral-based infection system, derived from HIV, equipped with the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) spike, to study the impact of BOLD-100 on viral entry," explained Dr Marc-André Langlois, Faculty Professor of Medicine and Canada Research Chair in Molecular Virology and Intrinsic Immunity, adding: "There is an urgent need for novel antiviral agents effective against COVID-19 and related pathogens, and we look forward to advancing our understanding of the role that GRP78 plays in viral entry."

BOLD-100's main mechanism of action is to inhibit stress-induced upregulation of GRP78. There is extensive literature suggesting that GRP78 plays a critical role in host recognition, viral entry and viral replication.