AI-developed new HIV drug, PCC nominated in 7 months! XtalPi (02228) incubated company Aiwei Tai achieves MPER structural breakthrough

Today, a biotechnology company making its public debut has brought the decades-long challenge of conquering HIV into a new phase of AI-driven drug discovery. Viva-Thera, incubated by XtalPi (02228), announced that, leveraging XtalPi's AI drug discovery capabilities, it has achieved key progress in HIV drug development: Viva-Thera has achieved an MPER structural breakthrough, and XtalPi's AI, through virtual screening and molecular design, helped the project complete preclinical candidate compound (PCC) nomination in just 7 months. Supported by XtalPi's AI platform, the company is simultaneously advancing four HIV drug development pipelines across different modalities. This achievement targets a market where a single drug can generate annual sales exceeding $10 billion, and approximately 41 million infected people worldwide still have ongoing treatment needs. Alongside the PCC, a preventive vaccine that has already obtained positive animal study data is being advanced, as well as gene therapy and cell therapy pipelines targeting the viral reservoir. Making its debut, Viva-Thera was founded by structural biology expert Dr. Fu Qingshan. XtalPi is both an incubator and strategic shareholder, as well as a core technology partner. This disclosure provides a concrete demonstration of the two parties' ability to translate scientific discovery into drug candidates. Nominating a PCC in 7 months reflects a dual breakthrough in biology and AI-driven molecular design and validation. This speed is built on complementary capabilities: Viva-Thera provides rare structural and target understanding, which XtalPi connects to its AI screening, molecule generation, and experimental iteration system. This PCC nomination shows that this synergy can already produce concrete drug development candidates. The MPER and adjacent transmembrane region participate in the key process of HIV entry into human cells, with approximately 90% sequence identity across different strains. For highly mutating HIV, MPER is an ideal targeting direction, but this region sits close to the viral membrane and has a complex structure, limiting precise design. Viva-Thera has for the first time resolved the atomic-resolution structure of the MPER-TMD-CT domain, providing XtalPi's AI with a more precise design basis. The structural information of a difficult target, experimentally confirmed antiviral activity, and PCC nomination together constitute the reasons this drug candidate is worth continued development. XtalPi's AI first screened more than ten specific binding compounds from a virtual compound library of tens of millions, and experiments further confirmed that five of them had strong viral inhibitory activity. On this basis, the two parties used AI molecule generation and structural optimization to determine the PCC drug molecule. This PCC nomination took only 7 months for the entire process. As a public industry reference, the average period from traditional drug discovery to the preclinical stage is about 4.5 years. XtalPi's algorithm also reduced the computing power consumption of this virtual screening step by 95% compared with traditional methods. For new drug R&D that requires continuous screening, validation, and optimization, lower computational input and a shorter candidate discovery cycle mean the team can obtain key results earlier and decide more quickly where to direct subsequent resources. The same structural basis is also supporting vaccine development. The antibody levels induced by Viva-Thera's novel MPER immunogen in rhesus macaques were about 5 times those of traditional HIV immunogens; after 1,000-fold dilution of antiserum, it still had high inhibitory capacity against HIV pseudovirus infection. The former figure reflects the strength of the immune response, while the latter result reflects the actual antiviral function of the antibodies. Together, they indicate that structural design has been translated into observable biological effects. Based on target conservation, the team proposes that the candidate vaccine is expected to cover more than 90% of circulating strains, further expanding the R&D space for broad-spectrum prevention. These results separately support the development potential of small molecules and vaccines. The market has already provided a clear commercial reference for effective innovative HIV products. Gilead's 2025 financial report shows that full-year sales of the HIV treatment drug Biktarvy reached $14.3 billion, up 7% year over year. A single product alone has formed annual revenue at the tens-of-billions-of-dollars level. Long-acting innovative products also have significant commercial value. The HIV prevention drug Yeztugo, administered once every six months, had a U.S. annual list price of $28,218 at launch, about $28,200. This price does not deduct insurance, discounts, or assistance, nor does it represent the global market price, but it clearly presents the pricing scale of long-acting innovative HIV products. At the same time, unmet need remains enormous: in 2025, about 41 million people worldwide were living with HIV, with about 1.2 million new infections that year. On the treatment side, there is a need for more convenient, longer-lasting regimens that can address drug resistance; on the prevention side, there is a need for products that are easier to access and provide sustained protection. The sales and prices of existing products show that HIV innovation has considerable commercial carrying capacity; the burden of long-term medication and accessibility issues leave room for new products to improve. Viva-Thera's long-acting small molecules and broad-spectrum vaccine respectively correspond to these clear needs. If they can establish advantages in efficacy, dosing frequency, or cost in the future, they will have the opportunity to enter this global market. The company is also advancing toward deeper curative needs. In addition to small molecules and vaccines, Viva-Thera is developing a gene delivery system targeting CD4+ T cells, using gene editing tools to address HIV proviral DNA integrated into the host genome. It has completed vector construction, cell infection experiments, and related introduction work in humanized mice, while also laying out in situ CAR-T and universal CD4+ T cells. In addition, the team is working deeply with Jitai Technology's (07666.HK) AI nanodelivery platform NanoForge to jointly advance HIV mRNA vaccine R&D. From XtalPi's AI molecular design to Jitai's AI nanodelivery, technological synergy within the XtalPi incubation ecosystem is forming a more complete R&D chain, accelerating industrial translation and value creation. These four pipelines each have clear tasks: the vaccine prevents infection, small molecules block viral entry, and gene and cell therapies further target the root of persistent infection. The viral reservoir in particular is the core reason why existing treatments are difficult to eliminate and why the virus may rebound after stopping treatment, and it is also an important direction in cure research. These pipelines share the same underlying R&D system empowered by XtalPi's AI: computation guides design, and experimental feedback drives optimization. The completion of PCC nomination for this small-molecule project in 7 months provides a concrete example of this system's ability to accelerate candidate drug discovery. As a strategic shareholder, XtalPi has an equity basis to participate in Viva-Thera's subsequent value growth, and is expected to use its multimodal AI drug R&D platform to help Viva-Thera unlock the tens-of-billions-of-dollars HIV treatment market. At the same time, for XtalPi, this provides a clear footnote to the value of its AI4S platform: when AI can be combined with deep scientific discovery, the process of advancing difficult-to-develop targets into concrete drug candidates is accelerating, and the platform's commercial potential is accelerating into verifiable pipeline assets.