Antibacterial Product Development

The Antibiotic Irony

The pharmaceutical industry has long sought to develop continuing generations of ‘broad-spectrum antibiotics’ – i.e., drugs that indiscriminately kill any and most bacteria they come in contact with. With such drugs, physicians need not know the actual infecting bacterium to successfully treat the infection.  Since in the past the technology has not existed to rapidly identify an offending pathogen before initiating therapy, broad spectrum antibiotics have been widely accepted as the ‘silver bullet’ for most bacterial infections.  Unfortunately it has been precisely these drugs and this treatment dogma that have caused the very scourge of drug-resistant bacteria we are experiencing today – an “antibiotic irony”.  In addition to spurring the development of antibiotic resistance, the use of broad spectrum antibiotics can result in further health problems in treated patients; such antibiotics kill beneficial bacterial ‘bystanders’ as well as disease-causing pathogens.

Today we are entering the era of ‘personalized medicine,’ when advances in diagnostic technology enable the rapid, precise identification of an offending pathogen prior to starting treatment. AvidBiotics’ Avidocin™ proteins, based on their highly specific targeting ability, are uniquely suited to take advantage of this increased diagnostic knowledge to avoid the unintended and consequential collateral damage to beneficial human microbiota.

Internal Development Efforts

AvidBiotics is currently pursuing human antibacterial applications of Avidocin™ protein technology with an initial focus on Clostridium difficile gastrointestinal infections, Escherichia coli O157:H7 and enterohemorrhagic colitis.

C. difficile infections are among the fastest rising hospital acquired infections, recently overtaking MRSA (methycillin-resistant Staph. aureus) as the leading infection risk. Antibiotics do not serve C. diff. infections well, due to both rising antibiotic resistance in that organism and the collateral damage that antibiotics inflict on beneficial gastrointestinal microbes. AvidBiotics has discovered Avidocin proteins that kill specifically C. diff., and has been developing production processes order to make this product candidate easier and more efficient to work with in a lab setting (i.e., in an aerobic environment).

E. coli O157:H7 is an important human pathogen associated with serious enterohemorrhagic diarrheal disease. AvidBiotics and collaborators at Harvard Medical School have successfully demonstrated that orally delivered Avidocin proteins targeting E. coli O157:H7 can not only prevent an infection with that organism, but can successfully treat animals (rabbits) with diarrhea and colitis caused by the same pathogen. (Publication submitted)

Collaborative Programs

AvidBiotics is also pursuing several applications of its Avidocin protein technology through grants from the National Institutes of Health. These include the development of Avidocin proteins against:

• Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes plague
• Acinetobacter, a bacterium associated with serious, often broadly antibiotic-resistant infections in Intensive Care Units and incurred by U.S. military deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
• Multiple shiga toxin producing E. coli.

Future Health Care Applications for Avidocin Proteins

New discoveries about the human microbiota and its importance to human health and disease are requiring a re-examination of the definition of infectious disease. Recent discoveries have suggested a link between intestinal bacteria and such health conditions as obesity, asthma, type 2 diabetes, and other diseases previously not considered having such a cause.  Avidocin proteins may have the potential to address such opportunities due to their unique and precise specificity for targeted bacteria and even specific bacterial strains, specificity that is not possessed by antibiotics.