Affinium launches new class of antibiotics
candidate, which may represent a potential breakthrough as the
first antibiotic to a newly targeted bacterial pathway in 40 years.
Affinium hope to develop a novel MRSA antibiotic to be used potential as an IV and oral antibiotic for hospital and community settings. The candidate is one of multiple compounds from Affinium Galapagos program.
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a hospital infection, which is now beginning to spread into the general community. The prevalence of nosocomial infections caused by MRSA has been increasing for several years in many countries around the world. The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that between 60,000 and 80,000 Americans die each year from nosocomial infections and the cause in the majority of cases is S. aureus.
"It is important that our development candidate operates via a novel mechanism of action with very novel chemistry, and distinct from any other antibiotic on the market."
"Our drug candidates selectively inhibit a bacterial pathway to kill bacteria without any detectable side effects to the analogous human pathway. Because of their unique way of working, we believe resistance will be slow to develop," said Judd Berman,, senior vice president of chemistry at Affinium.
The challenge of producing antibiotics to kill drug resistant bacteria will continue because bacteria will continue to find ways of becoming resistant to drugs. It is an ongoing problem and will continue to pose a challenge in drug development.
The team selected Affinium's first development candidate after evaluating animal data from over 150 compounds with potent MRSA activity from this new antibiotic class.
The recent advancements of our MRSA program represent an important milestone in the development of a new class of breakthrough antibiotics. The last time the industry targeted a new pathway with an antibiotic was the fluoroquinolone class in the 1960's. Fluoroquinolones now represent over $7 billion in world wide annual sales.
Indeed, the annual cost for treating antibiotic resistant infections is approximately $30 billion (€25.7bn) in the USA alone.
