Bactevo Unveils “TIME” A Novel, Game-Changing Medicines Discovery Platform

CAMBRIDGE, England--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Bactevo Ltd today unveiled a game-changing Totally Integrated Medicines Engine (TIME) capable of 100 million phenotypic assays per hour, a landmark in disease-relevant assay screening.

“Bactevo is moving to its next phase of growth and with the appointments of Alex Alanine and Nicki Thompson. In addition to our world-leading SAB, we have a team in place to deliver success.”

TIME consists of a ground-breaking synthetic chemistry technology TSAR (Total Structure Activity Relationships), which removes the limitations of the current generation of encoded libraries and combinatorial chemistry. TSAR enables on the fly synthesis and screening of billions of drug-like compounds in a week. This scale of discovery allows Bactevo to transform the traditional linear process. By introducing simultaneous drug dose response and ADMET assays, seamlessly integrated for every compound, a vast acceleration of the drug discovery process can be achieved.

Bactevo’s TIME platform also incorporates a powerful and complementary collection of engineered natural product libraries. The company is now identifying the first therapeutic leads for its gateway discovery program in rare mitochondrial disorders and progressing them to fulfil the next phase of its mission to bring effective medicines to patients with high unmet need disorders.

“We intend to revolutionise the efficiency and success of drug discovery with the technologies that we have built within our TIME platform. It has the power to identify high-quality drug candidates rapidly, greatly enabled by achieving 100 million patient relevant screenings per hour. This scalable capacity accesses new chemistry and screening that is already 1000-fold beyond the fastest alternative platforms. We are attracting considerable interest from many potential partners in the pharmaceutical industry,” stated Dr. David Williams, Chief Executive Officer. “Bactevo is moving to its next phase of growth and with the appointments of Alex Alanine and Nicki Thompson. In addition to our world-leading SAB, we have a team in place to deliver success.”

Adding more than 20 years’ drug discovery experience from pharma, Dr Alexander Alanine has been appointed as Chief Operating Officer (COO) at Bactevo. Alex joins the company from Roche, where he has steered development numerous drug candidates from identification through Phases 1 to 3 and across therapy areas, including neuroscience, cardiovascular, infectious diseases and oncology. In his career at Roche, Alex held numerous scientific leadership roles and built-up several units from scratch, including an innovative technologies group, hit-to-lead unit, CNS lead optimization and most recently external technology and collaborative alliances portfolio where he championed key technology collaborations, Alex holds a PhD in organic chemistry and undertook post-doctoral studies at the ETH Zurich and Cambridge UK.

Bactevo has also appointed Dr Nicki Thompson as its Chief Business Officer (CBO). Nicki brings to Bactevo more than 20 years’ experience in pharmaceutical and biotechnology R&D and partnering. She was previously VP and Global Head of External Drug Discovery at F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd and prior to that, Senior Director, Business Development for GSK’s Centre of Excellence for External Drug Discovery (CEEDD) and Alternative Discovery and Development groups. Nicki’s Biotech experience includes her role as CBO for Phico Therapeutics, Head of Business Development (EU) for leadXpro AG and she was Head of Drug Discovery at Syntaxin Ltd. She holds a PhD in Cell Biology from University College London.

Supporting Bactevo’s management team is a world-leading Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) that has been selected to augment both the basic and commercial nature of the company’s approach. Sir Doug Turnbull from the Wellcome Trust Institute of Mitochondrial Research and Dr Jane Osbourn, Vice President, R&D and Site Leader, MedImmune, have recently joined the SAB.

Professor Sir Turnbull is Director of Wellcome Trust Centre for Mitochondrial Research, which has had a major impact on mitochondrial disease both in terms of scientific advances and national/international policy. Professor Turnbull leads the development of one of the largest cohorts of patients with mitochondrial disease. He also spearheaded the commissioning of a new and unique NHS service for patients with mitochondrial disease

Dr Osbourn has made a significant contribution to the discovery and development of more than 40 clinical drug candidates. She is Chair of the Board of Directors of the BioIndustry Association, a Director of Babraham Bioscience Technologies, and a Director of Cambridge Enterprise and has presented at a number of parliamentary Select Committees.

About Bactevo

Bactevo has built a unique and game-changing Totally Integrated Medicines Engine (TIME) to create novel therapeutics. Utilising its paradigm shift in the speed, efficiency and quality of drug discovery, as well as massively enhancing safety profiling to improve clinical success, Bactevo is developing breakthrough medicines for the treatment of diseases that involve defects in mitochondrial function, such as MELAS and LHON, as well as diseases of the central nervous system, such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). Further information can be found at www.bactevo.com.