3510 Dunhill Street
San Diego, CA 92121
Phone: 858-410-3030
www.elitra.com

Harry Hixson, chairman, president and CEO
Privately Held

Overview

Elitra Pharmaceuticals Inc. focuses on antimicrobial functional genomics. It uses proprietary technologies and molecular biology tools to identify the essential genes that enable bacteria and fungi to grow and survive. Elitra intends to discover, develop and commercialize novel antibiotic and antifungal drugs that inhibit the products of those genes. The drugs will be designed to treat common and life-threatening infections and to address the problem of drug resistance in the antimicrobial arena.

The company has developed an automated high-throughput approach to discovering new antimicrobials, called ultra-rapid gene-to-lead generation. It also uses its bioinformatics, mechanism-based whole cell assays and high-throughput screening tools to evaluate gene functions.

Elitra in December 2000 acquired Mycota Biosciences Inc., of Montreal. Mycota’s proprietary methodology for identifying essential genes, Gene Replacement and Conditional Expression (GRACE), permits gene identification on a genome-wide scale, which allows for the identification of all drug targets for a pathogen.

Elitra has exclusively licensed the PathoSeq microbial sequence database, software and analysis tools from Incyte Genomics Inc. to use as a platform to build a proprietary database comprised of the essential genes of multiple pathogens. This will allow the selection of optimal drug targets for Elitra’s drug development programs.

Partners

Research collaboration to discover and develop novel antibiotic compounds: Merck & Co. Inc.

Joint research program to discover and develop drug candidates for the treatment and prevention of microbial infections: MediChem Life Sciences Inc.

Discovery, development and commercialization of products for the treatment or prevention of human bacterial or fungal infections: LG Chemical Ltd.

Acquisition of the source code and microbial sequence data unique to the PathoSeq Database and licensing of related source code, software, patent rights and the trademark for PathoSeq: Incyte Genomics Inc.