Rega Institute for Medical Research


The Rega Institute for Medical Research is a Belgian scientific establishment that is part of the Catholic University of Leuven in central Belgium. The Rega Institute is an interfacultary biomedical research institute of the Catholic University of Leuven and consists of departments of medicine and pharmacology.

Divisions

The Rega Institute was founded in 1954 within the unitary Catholic University of Leuven by Pieter De Somer, who named it for Joseph Rega, a Professor at the Old University of Leuven in the 18th century. The building of the Rega Institute was constructed in 1954 and paid by the company Recherche et Industrie Thérapeutiques in Rixensart, where Dr. De Somer had a leading function. During the sixties, De Somer withdrew from R.I.T. and in 1968 he became the founder and first rector of the Dutch-speaking Katholieke Universiteit te Leuven. From 1970 on the Rega Institute has worldwide cooperations with a lot of industrial companies. Since 1985, after rector P. De Somer died, the management of the Institute consists of professors from the laboratories housed in the Institute.
In 1987, the Rega Institute entered into a cooperation with Janssen Pharmaceutica. This collaboration would result in the discovery of a totally new class of HIV Reverse Transcriptase inhibitors, the so-called Non-Nucleoside RT Inhibitors or NNRTI's. NNRTIs distinguish themselves of the NRTI's because they do not bind at the catalytic place of the enzyme but to another, allosteric binding site. The NNRTIs block the normal enzymatic activity of the RT and thereby interrupt the replication cycle of HIV. As a result of the "Rega-Janssen" cooperation several prototypes of NNRTIs, among which the so-called TIBO and alpha-APA derivatives were created. This research, in cooperation with Tibotec, resulted in a particular powerful anti-HIV compound, Rilpivirine. NNRTIs are at the moment considered one of the essential ingredients of so-called anti-HIV cocktails. The best well-known NNRTIs are nevirapine and efavirenz.

Achievements

The Nucleoside analogs, d4T, 3'-fluoro-3'-deoxythymidine and 3'-fluorodideoxyguanosine, and the NNRTI's 1--6-phenylthiothymine, tetrahydro-imidazo-benzodiazepine-2-one and -thione and alpha-anilinophenylacetamide were first described at the Rega Institute. The anti-viral drugs Brivudine and Tenofovir were discovered at the Rega Institute.