Dive Brief:
- The AMR Centre (AMRC), a joint private-public initiative to support and accelerate the development of new antibiotics and diagnostics, has officially launched at Alderley Park, the bioscience campus at the former AstraZeneca site in Cheshire, England.
- At the launch on Tuesday, the center also announced a deal with British company EligoChem Ltd to co-develop an antimicrobial peptide. AMRC is contributing research expertise and access to facilities, and its partner, the global initiative CARB-X, has provided an initial grant award of up to $1.5 million with potential option payments of up to $3.3 million.
- The role of the AMR Centre is to fill the translation gap between drug discovery at universities, institutes and industry, and clinical proof-of-concept to patients in large pharma companies.
Dive Insight:
"Antimicrobial resistance is a growing problem with declining solutions. It's a threat that doesn't distinguish between black or white, or between rich or poor," said AMR Centre's executive director, Peter Jackson, at the AMRC's launch on Tuesday.
The AMR Center, a public-private investment using the existing infrastructure at Alderley Park and across the UK, aims to support the development of new antimicrobials and diagnostics through support of translational research, including expertise and operational capabilities.
"We don't plan to invent our own drugs. We are centered around building capacity and capability to fast track new treatments for AMR through preclinical development into clinical trials. Our model is to partner with small and medium enterprises to co-develop early stage programs up to clinical proof-of-concept, with an initial focus on new therapeutics for WHO critical priorities," said Jackson.
The center was opened by economist Jim O'Neill, who was responsible for the UK government's Review on Antimicrobial Resistance.
"This center is a powerful vindication of my work, and a vivid illustration that there is now a lot going on in the area. We are seeing funding going into early stage research and more and more people moving into early stage research," said O'Neill.
According to Jackson, developing new antimicrobials and diagnostics will need national and international public and private collaborations to leverage skills, knowledge and funding into translational R&D. AMRC has responded to this by putting in place three collaborations with industry partners since its inception in 2016, as well as a partnership with Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Accelerator (CARB-X). CARB-X is a $400 million global initiative backed by the U.S. Government and the UK's Wellcome Trust, with preclinical support services from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
At the launch on Tuesday, Peter Jackson announced the AMR Centre's latest deal, a collaboration with EligoChem Ltd, a British drug design company based on the former Pfizer site in Sandwich, Kent. In July, EligoChem was awarded up to $4.8 million in non-dilutive funding from CARB-X, made up of $1.5 million upfront and up to $3.3 million in milestone payments, to develop helical antimicrobial peptides. These are in development as Gram-negative antibiotics with low potential for resistance, and lower toxicity than other known antimicrobial peptides.
"EligoChem has a promising program which we are going to support by investing our expertise and resources. Antimicrobial peptides are being looked at because the way they work, not necessarily targeting specific molecular receptors on the microbial surface, but rather assuming structures that allow them to interact directly with membranes, means they may be one solution to the problem of resistance to conventional antibiotics," said Jackson.
In September, AMRC announced a co-development deal with U.S. clinical-stage biotech Microbiotix, Inc. for the prevention and treatment of ventilator-associated pneumonia caused by Pseudomonas aeruginosa. This deal focuses on Microbiotix' bacterial virulence program to create a T3SS (type III secretion system) inhibitor. The project was awarded up to $3.2 million, based on successful progression through milestones, from CARB-X in March 2017. Under the terms of the agreement, the AMR Centre will provide up to $1.1 million of technical support including over $600,000 of project funding, alongside $1.6 million of initial CARB-X funding, to identify a drug candidate to take into clinical trials.
And In October, the AMR Centre licensed exclusive worldwide rights to Swedish pharma Medivir AB’s research stage metallo-β-lactamase inhibitor (MBLI) program. The aim is to create agents that will reverse the resistance to beta-lactam antibiotics such as penicillin, and that can be dosed alongside antibiotics as an intravenous combination therapy. This could help to restore activity of last line of defense antibiotics such as carbapenems. Resistance linked with metallo-β-lactamases is endemic in Asia and is a growing problem in the UK.
"We have made a great start, but it is only a beginning," said Jackson. "By 2022, we want to have five programs in clinical trials."