Discuva Announces Extension Of Ongoing Pharma Collaboration To Combat Life-Threatening Infections Caused By Multi-Drug Resistant Bacteria

CAMBRIDGE, England--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Discuva Ltd, the antibiotics drug discovery and development company, today announced that its collaboration with Roche, originally initiated in February 2014, has been extended to February 2018 under a new contract amendment. The collaboration is focussed on the discovery and development of new antibiotics to treat life-threatening infections caused by multidrug resistant Gram-negative bacteria using Discuva’s proprietary SATI^N technology platform. Financial terms of the extension have not been disclosed.

“This contract amendment enables the programmes to benefit from the exceptional input of both parties and move the programmes more efficiently towards patients”

To date, the collaboration has resulted in multiple lead programmes that target Gram-negative pathogenic bacteria currently causing challenging antibiotic-resistant infections. The candidate antibiotics were identified from a phenotypic screening process and triaged using Discuva’s proprietary SATI^N technology to identify compounds with the optimal profile to progress successfully to the next stage of development. The collaboration extension allows the combined Roche/Discuva team to continue exploring these compounds in order to expedite the development of these novel antibiotic chemotypes towards essential medicines.

“This contract amendment enables the programmes to benefit from the exceptional input of both parties and move the programmes more efficiently towards patients,” stated Dr David Williams, CEO of Discuva. “We are passionately committed to establishing a succession of novel antibiotics to meet the challenge that the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance represents.”

In February 2014, Discuva and Roche entered into a worldwide collaboration and license agreement for the discovery and development of new antibiotics to treat life-threatening infections caused by multi-drug resistant Gram-negative bacteria using Discuva’s proprietary SATI^N technology platform (http://www.discuva.com/roche-and-discuva-join-forces-to-combat-life-threatening-infections-caused-by-multi-drug-resistant-bacteria/).

About antibiotic resistance

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 recently, which may lead to infections becoming more difficult to treat. In addition, 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, leaving them vulnerable to an increasing range of antibiotic resistant 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 and with additional costs to society for lost productivity potentially doubling these figures. At least 23,000 die as a direct result of antibiotic resistance in these increasingly dangerous infectious agents.

In a report published jointly by the European Medicines Agency, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the international network ReAct – Action on Antibiotic Resistance, at least 25,000 patients in the EU die each year from infections due to bacteria that are resistant to many medicines, and infections due to these bacteria in the EU result in additional healthcare costs and productivity losses of at least €1.5 billion each year.

About Discuva

Discuva aims to revolutionise the treatment of disease caused by bacterial infection by discovering and developing new antibiotics against highly drug-resistant pathogens. The company’s innovative proprietary technologies both identify new small molecule drugs against novel bacterial targets and facilitate their progression through to drug candidates with low clinical resistance, providing real solutions to the threat of global antibiotic resistance. Based in Cambridge, UK, Discuva’s drug pipeline is focused on providing therapeutics for currently untreatable hospital and community-based infections. For further information visit www.discuva.com.