CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--EnBiotix, Inc., a product-focused bioengineering company transforming and revitalizing existing antibiotic classes to combat the global rise of drug-resistant and drug-tolerant bacterial infections, today announced a new collaboration with Mayo Clinic to continue development of the company’s drug candidate EPP-001, an engineered bacteriophage product to deliver biofilm dispersing enzymes to treat Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) infections in prosthetic joints. In addition, EnBiotix received a funding award from Mayo Clinic Ventures which is helping to facilitate the project. The research program team will be supervised by Robin Patel, M.D., Director, Infectious Diseases Research Laboratory, Mayo Clinic, and Chair, Division of Clinical Microbiology, Mayo Clinic and Govind Rajagopalan Ph.D., Associate Professor of Immunology, and conducted at both Mayo Clinic and EnBiotix laboratories.
“We are delighted to receive this award and establish this relationship with Mayo Clinic,” said Jeffrey D. Wager, M.D., Chairman and CEO, EnBiotix. “Dr. Patel’s team is composed of world-leaders in the pre-clinical and clinical research of biofilm-mediated infections and is the ideal collaborator for EnBiotix in the field of engineered phage. Our team looks forward to working with Mayo Clinic to accelerate the development of EPP-001 to address the significant unmet medical need that arises from prosthetic joint infections.”
The enhancement of salvage therapy in the treatment of prosthetic joint infections (PJIs) will be the first medical indication for EPP-001. Super-antigens are genes found in 70 percent of S. aureus isolates. Their activation can trigger massive release of pro-inflammatory factors associated with septic shock and increased severity of infection. The program will aim to characterize the positive or negative effect of the drug candidate EPP-001 on the activation of the super-antigens in PJI clinical isolates of S. aureus obtained from Mayo Clinic.
Additional terms of the financing and collaboration agreement remain confidential between the parties.
About EPP-001
EPP-001 is an engineered bacteriophage using customized phages coding for biofilm-degrading enzyme payloads. EPP-001 will be initially developed in combination with standard antibiotic therapy for the treatment of prosthetic joint infections (PJIs) caused by S.aureus, since attempts to eradicate such infections with antibiotics alone fail up to 50% of the time. The current standard of care to treat PJI “salvage therapy failures” is a costly two-step surgical process involving prosthetic joint removal, debridement, and replacement with a new joint. PJI incidence is growing dramatically with an aging population requiring hip and knee replacements; by 2020 almost 2 million patients per year will receive a hip or knee replacement with some 2-3% developing these severely debilitating infections.
About EnBiotix
EnBiotix is an engineered antibiotics company deploying novel systems and synthetic biology technologies developed by Prof. James J. Collins, the Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering & Science Professor, Department of Biological Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. These technologies enable the development of both novel antibiotics and potentiators of existing antibiotics which have the potential to transform their spectrum of activity and resistance profile. With drug-resistant and drug-tolerant infections rapidly becoming a global health crisis, EnBiotix’s robust product pipeline addresses a wide range of acute and chronic infections to significantly impact the lives of patients. For more information, please visit www.enbiotix.com.
