Macrolide Pharmaceuticals announced it has been granted a CARB-X award of up to $6.8M to support the development of a novel fully synthetic, orally available macrolide antibiotic with Gram-negative activity, with the aim of treating serious infections including drug-resistant complicated urinary tract infections (cUTI).
“We are delighted to be partnering with CARB-X on this program to develop novel macrolides with first-in-class activity against drug-resistant Gram-negative pathogens,” said Richard Alm, PhD, Vice President of Biology and the collaboration’s Principal Investigator. “Rapidly increasing resistance in these organisms have reduced the effectiveness of many current antibiotic classes and created significant unmet clinical need. This award from CARB-X supports our efforts to leverage our powerful synthetic chemistry platform to develop novel therapeutics for patients with complicated urinary tract infections and will rapidly advance our lead candidates towards clinical trials.”
As an antibiotic class, macrolides are known to be effective against many Gram-positive pathogens, however, to date scientists have been unable to achieve macrolide activity against drug-resistant Gram-negative pathogens. Macrolide is leveraging its proprietary chemistry platform to re-engineer the macrolide scaffold with the aim of developing a new fully-synthetic macrolide antibiotic to treat drug-resistant Gram-negative infections that can be administered intravenously and orally. The company’s novel macrolides will also avoid macrolide-resistance mechanisms. The CARB-X funding will accelerate the company’s development program to reach human clinical studies.
About Macrolide Pharmaceuticals
Macrolide Pharmaceuticals is a next-generation antibiotics company developing macrolides that are first-in-class with Gram-negative activity and will have broad applicability across multiply resistant infectious diseases. The company was founded in 2015 with a fully-synthetic technology platform licensed from Harvard University. The platform is a groundbreaking technological advance that holds the foundational key to discover and create new macrolides from basic chemical building blocks that transform this class from its traditional Gram-positive spectrum to include multi-drug resistant (MDR) Gram-negative pathogens. Macrolide is supported and advised by world-class investors, partners, Board members, scientific advisors and funding organizations. Its lead program aims to address MDR infections caused by Gram-negative pathogens.
Macrolide is headquartered in Watertown, Massachusetts. For more information, please visit the Macrolide website at www.macrolide.com.
