Doubling the BET

Less than seven weeks after a group of academics reported the first potent bromodomain inhibitor¹ and showed the molecule's efficacy in cancer, a separate group of researchers at GlaxoSmithKline plc and The Rockefeller Universityhas generated a selective bromodomain inhibitor that has therapeutic activity in preclinical models of sepsis and endotoxic shock.²

Proteins that contain bromodomains provide a scaffold for the assembly of chromatin complexes that modulate gene expression, including increasing the expression of inflammatory genes...