Antabio announces further progress towards the treatment of antibiotic-resistant infections

Milestones have been achieved in two antibacterial discovery programs in collaboration with the Wellcome Trust, triggering drawdown of €3.1M tranches from Antabio’s Seeding Drug Discovery Awards

 

Antabio announced today that it has achieved two milestones in its antibacterial drug discovery collaborations with the Wellcome Trust. These results release a further €3.1 million from the Seeding Drug Discovery Awards received by Antabio.
The first collaboration (“the MBLi program”) began in February 2013 when the Wellcome Trust awarded Antabio €4.7 million to fund the discovery of a novel, safe and efficacious inhibitor of bacterial metallo beta-lactamases (MBLs). Multi-drug resistant Gram-negative bacteria account for most hospital infections worldwide, causing up to 75,000 deaths yearly and extra healthcare costs/productivity losses of > €1.5 billion. Current antibacterial chemotherapy is increasingly inadequate due to the rise of clinical resistance, mainly related to the spread of genes encoding various carbapenemases, including the MBL enzymes of the NDM and VIM types, for which no inhibitors are currently available or under clinical development. Antabio has identified a highly-active in vivo lead series with drug-like features and MBL coverage against clinical isolates including NDM variants. These results mark a key milestone in the MBLi collaboration with the Wellcome Trust which aims to nominate a preclinical development candidate by Q1 2017.
The second collaboration (“the PBi program”) began in May 2015 when the Trust awarded Antabio €4.0 million to fund the development of novel small molecule drugs for the treatment of chronic Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PA) infections in Cystic Fibrosis (CF) patients. CF is the most common lethal, hereditary disease in Caucasian populations, affecting 1 in every 3,500 births in Europe with a current life expectancy of about 38 years among CF sufferers. Most disease-related morbidity and mortality in CF is caused by progressive lung disease as a result of bacterial infection and airway inflammation, primarily associated with the effects of chronic PA lung infection and the persistence of PA biofilms. Antabio has identified a potent and selective in vitro lead series with all the physicochemical properties required for the achievement of the first milestone within this second development program in collaboration with the Wellcome Trust.
“I am particularly proud of the high performance of Antabio’s R&D team in our collaboration with the Wellcome Trust. With the support of the Trust we are able to accelerate the progress of our programs towards clinically-effective drugs that will have very significant value for the treatment of patients with life-threatening drug-resistant infections” said Marc Lemonnier, CEO of Antabio. “Our company is building on this increasing momentum and actively seeking new investors and partners to bring these and other innovative product candidates to the clinic.”