Discuva has received £1.5 million award from Innovate UK. The grant is to help develop novel antibiotics tackling multidrug resistance and life-threatening bacterial infections.
According to the O’Neil Report on antimicrobial resistance, drug-resistant infections could kill 10 million people a year by 2050.
The project, entitled “Exploitation of transport mechanisms for novel Gram-negative antibiotic drug discovery”, will use Discuva's Selective Antibiotic Target IdentificatioN (SATIN) technology to explore new biological targets and deliver novel drug candidates that have a reduced likelihood of eliciting resistance compared to conventional antibiotics.
Antibacterial resistance represents a major threat to public health worldwide. The problem is getting worse due to the lack of new effective treatments being authorized.
Many more people die of complications caused by secondary infection with antibiotic-resistant bacteria, because the side effects of the treatment for their primary condition reduces the patient’s defence to bacteria.
In the USA, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that more than two million patients are affected by drug-resistant infections each year, with direct healthcare costs as high as $20 billion.
The CDC adds that additional costs to society for lost productivity potentially doubles these figures. At least 23,000 people die as a direct result of antibiotic resistance in these increasingly dangerous infectious agents.
At least 25,000 patients in the EU die each year from infections due to bacteria that are resistant to many medicines, according to a report published by the European Medicines Agency, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and ReAct–Action on Antibiotic Resistance. Infections due to these bacteria result in additional healthcare costs and productivity losses of at least €1.5 billion each year.
David Williams, Chief Executive Officer of Discuva, said SATIN will let Discuva use genome-wide molecular to fully exploit drug uptake and excretion in bacterial cells.
“This information will enable the development of antimicrobial drugs to combat the antibiotic resistant Gram-negative pathogens that are the cause of life-threatening infections in our healthcare system,” Williams said.
“Ultimately, our aim is to provide significant benefits to patients, the NHS and health care systems globally, as well as the antibiotic research community.”
He added that the project will also contribute to an expansion of Discuva's capabilities and further develop its early-stage antimicrobial pipeline.
The company specialise in discovering and developing new antibiotics against highly drug-resistant pathogens.
They identify new small-molecule drugs against novel bacterial targets, then aid their proagression through to drug candidates with low clinical resistance.
