Conquering HIV’s capsid

Abstract

For most of his career at Gilead Sciences, medicinal chemist Winston Tse has lived and breathed one thing. While his peers at other companies hopped from project to project, Tse has spent the past decade obsessing over a single target: the HIV capsid. HIV’s capsid is a complex, protein-rich shell that protects the genetic payload the virus is trying to sneak into the cells of its host. Tse’s goal? To prove that a small molecule can disrupt that shield and keep the virus from replicating. Getting to his goal has taken tenacity. For perspective, Tse’s daughter was born the year he started working on capsid inhibitors; this fall, she’ll be in the fourth grade. Finally, Tse and a sizable team of medicinal chemists, biologists, virologists, and academic partners have done it. By 2018, Gilead expects to begin human studies of a capsid inhibitor with the potential to be dosed once