NIH puts $4.5m into superbug killers

At a time when conventional antibiotics are losing their potency against new strains of multidrug-resistant bacteria, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has contributed $4.48 million to a collaborative project between the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (MIPS) and Californian biotech Rempex Pharmaceuticals to develop new antibiotics.

The MIPS team comprises Associate Professor Jian Li, Dr Tony Velkov, Professor Roger Nation, Associate Professor Philip Thompson and Dr Kade Roberts.

Li and Nation have been investigating polymyxins, a class of antibiotics, for more than a decade and are international leaders in the field.

Rempex is a San Diego based pharmaceutical company focused exclusively on developing drugs to combat emerging antibiotic resistance.

Polymyxins are a class of antibiotics based around a cyclic peptide and hydrophobic tail that disrupts the structure of the bacterial cell membrane in many Gram-negative bacteria, and offer new hope in a world where antibiotic efficacy is waning.

“It is not an exaggeration to state that the world is on the brink of a return to the pre-antibiotic era,” Associate Professor Li said.

“In recent decades, bacteria that are resistant to all available antibiotics have emerged, while at the same time there has been a marked decline in the search for new drugs to combat these superbugs.

“We're aiming to develop at least one new drug candidate for future clinical trials,” Associate Professor Li said.

The Infectious Diseases Society of America has identified a ‘hit-list’ of six multidrug-resistant bacteria as being the most difficult to treat. These bacteria will be targeted by the MIPS researchers and their Rempex collaborators in California.