ST 789, A Candidate for Combination Therapies of Infections and Cancer

ST 789 is a synthetic compound which belongs to a new family of hypoxanthine derivatives exhibiting an aminoacidic function at the N-9 position of the purine ring (Cornaglia-Ferraris et al., 1984). Available literature indicates that hypoxanthine derivatives exhibit well established immunomodulant properties (Cornaglia-Ferraris et al., 1984). Furthermore, the addition of arginine to these molecules proved able to strongly enhance their immunomodulant activity. We review here the immunomodulant properties of both arginine and arginine-containing compounds, and mostly of ST 789. Furthermore, we report the results of preliminary experiments performed in our laboratory to better understand the mechanisms accounting for the immunomodulant activity of ST 789.