CARB-X (Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator) has announced an award of $1.06 million to the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS) to develop a new class of small-molecule inhibitors of bacterial sliding clamp (DnaN), a pivotal component of DNA replication machinery, which is a clinically unproven but promising novel mechanism for targeting bacteria.
Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator (CARB-X), led by Boston University, is awarding $1.2 million to the Andrew G. Myers Research Group at Harvard University to develop a series of enhanced oral antibiotics that directly target a range of antibiotic-resistant bacteria which cause serious lower respiratory tract and skin and soft tissue infections.
Making them an antibiotic of last resort, the U.K.’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency introduced new restrictions on the use of fluoroquinolones due to the risk of potentially long-term or irreversible side effects.
Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. has entered into an asset purchase agreement with Spexis AG for a preclinical program of antibiotics from a novel class, targeting gram-negative bacteria, including multidrug-resistant strains.
Nrx Pharmaceuticals Inc. has announced FDA clearance of its IND application for the use of NRX-101 (lurasidone hydrochloride/D-cycloserine) for the treatment of complicated urinary tract infections (cUTI).
Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC has divulged compounds acting as lipid A export ATP-binding/permease protein (MsbA) inhibitors reported to be useful for the treatment of gram-negative (multidrug-resistant) bacterial infections.
The emergence of Staphylococcus aureus strains resistant to almost all approved antibiotics in the clinic poses an urgent public health concern. Thus, new antibiotics exploiting alternative antibacterial mechanisms or molecular structures are critically needed to address the long-term threat of multidrug-resistant S. aureus, particularly methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA).
The Innovative Medicines Initiative’s COMBINE (COllaboration for prevention and treatment of MDR Bacterial INfEctions) project is developing a standardized in vivo pneumonia model to test small-molecule antibiotics.
Glox Therapeutics Ltd. has raised £4.3 million (US$5.37 million) in seed funding to develop targeted therapeutics against antibiotic-resistant gram-negative bacteria. The company was founded earlier this year as a spin-out from the Universities of Glasgow and Oxford.
Traditionally developed antibiotics generally act inhibiting essential bacterial enzymes. However, new strategies are urgently needed to discover novel antibiotics against bacterial infections, such as Lyme disease caused by Borrelia burgdorferi. The chaperone high-temperature protein G (HtpG) is a nonessential bacterial protein containing a desirable druggable domain.