GAITHERSBURG, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today, Adaptive Phage Therapeutics, Inc. (APT), a clinical-stage company founded to provide an effective therapeutic response to the global rise of multi-drug resistant (MDR) pathogenic bacteria, announced that a therapeutic approach leveraging bacteriophage (phage), as outlined in 2003 by NIH Emeritus Scientist, Carl R Merril, MD, (Merril, et al, Nature Reviews; Drug Discovery, 2003) was used by the University of California – San Diego Medical Center to successfully rescue a terminally ill patient infected with multidrug resistant Acinetobacter baumannii (MDRAB).
Over the past several years, Dr. Merril’s techniques have been refined and are part of ongoing research efforts by the United States Naval Medical Research Center (NMRC), Silver Spring, Maryland.
In 2016, Dr. Merril co-founded APT, based in Gaithersburg, Maryland, to pursue FDA regulatory approval for broad use of this approach. APT has established a collaborative research agreement (CRADA) and an exclusive license agreement with the NMRC to advance the PhageBank™ and develop diagnostic and phage production technologies.
Dr. Merril explained, “Two key components of APT’s approach are the large and dynamically growing collection of bacteriophages (the PhageBank™) and the innovative phage matching technology used to identify effective and patient-specific therapies for life threatening bacterial infections. With this approach, APT can overcome resistant bacterial strains that has plagued the use of antibiotics.”
Greg Merril, CEO of APT, noted: “While the company pursues full market approval through FDA regulatory processes we are currently open to assessing critically ill patients suffering from multidrug resistant infections for possible treatment within the FDA’s Emergency Investigational New Drug program.”
About Multidrug-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii (MDRAB): On February 25, 2017, the World Health Organization (WHO) listed Acinetobacter baumannii as the Priority 1: CRITICAL threat for antibiotic resistant pathogens. Mortality rate is estimated at approximately 40% with current therapies. There are an estimated 230,000 infections per year in the US and Europe.
About Adaptive Phage Therapeutics (APT): Adaptive Phage Therapeutics, Inc. (APT) is a clinical-stage company founded to provide an effective therapeutic response to the global rise of multi-drug resistant (MDR) pathogenic bacteria. In 2016, APT entered into a collaborative research and development agreement (CRADA) with the Naval Medical Research Center (NMRC) and has negotiated worldwide exclusive rights to NMRC’s innovative system for phage/pathogen rapid matching (patents pending), as well as proprietary datasets, and PhageBank™.
