CARB-X invests up to $48 million to accelerate antibiotic research

The Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator, or CARB-X, is investing $24 million immediately and up to $24 million more in milestone-based additional payments over 3 years to help 11 biotech companies and research teams accelerate development of new antimicrobials and diagnostic products to treat antibiotic-resistant infections, according to a press release.`

The projects, currently early-stage research programs, include three potential new classes of small molecule antibiotics and four nontraditional products that will target gram-negative bacteria prioritized by the CDC and WHO.

“We need global powers to work together on a number of fronts — from the beginning to the end of the drug and diagnostic development pipeline,” Tim Jinks, PhD, head of the drug-resistant infection program at the Wellcome Trust, said in the release. “Through CARB-X, we are filling the void for early discovery and support. And with this first portfolio we have taken bold decisions to ensure a broad range of approaches for finding new ways to treat and diagnose resistant infection.”

CARB-X, funded by BARDA and the Wellcome Trust, plans to invest up to $450 million over 5 years to accelerate the preclinical discovery and development of at least 20 new antimicrobial products and move at least two new products into human trials.

This is the first phase of funding by CARB-X as one of the world’s largest public-private partnerships to rapidly produce antibacterials. The CARB-X Advisory Board and the CARB-X team evaluated projects from 168 applicants, selecting only those that targeted one of the deadly antibiotic-resistant bacteria on CDC’s Serious or Urgent Threat List or WHO’s Priority Pathogen list.

Among the chosen projects, CARB-X awarded Tetraphase Pharmaceuticals $4 million in research funding to develop TP-6076, an antibiotic candidate that has demonstrated potent activity against multidrug-resistant bacteria in preclinical research.

“The selection of TP-6076 as one of the first candidates in the CARB-X portfolio highlights the potential of this early-stage antibiotic compound due to its exceptional in vitro potency against two of the most dangerous organisms, carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) and carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii (CRAB),” Guy Macdonald, president and CEO of Tetraphase, said in a press release. “This collaboration provides important nondilutive funding dedicated to the advancement of TP-6076, which recently completed a phase 1 single-ascending dose clinical trial and for which we plan to report data in June at the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) and Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC) 2017 joint annual meeting.”

Kevin Outterson, JD, LLM, executive director of CARB-X and professor of law at Boston University, cautioned that because the projects sponsored by the public-private partnership are in early stages of development, they are at high risk of failure.

“But if successful, these projects hold exciting potential in the fight against the deadliest antibiotic-resistance bacteria,” he said.

Disclosures: Jinks is head of drug-resistant infection at Wellcome Trust. Macdonald is president and CEO of Tetraphase. Outterson is the executive director of CARB-X.