GAITHERSBURG, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Adaptive Phage Therapeutics, Inc. (“APT”), a clinical-stage biotechnology company dedicated to providing therapies to treat infectious diseases, today announced that the AMR Action Fund has joined an existing $41 million Series B round as a co-investor. The round was initiated in May 2021 and led by Deerfield Management Company, with participation from a second institutional investor and Mayo Clinic. Proceeds of the AMR Action Fund’s investment are primarily intended to support APT’s clinical trials to address substantial unmet patient needs in Prosthetic Joint Infection (PJI) and Diabetic Foot Osteomyelitis (DFO).
“We are very pleased to welcome the AMR Action Fund as an investor,” stated Greg Merril, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of APT. “In addition to their capital, the AMR Action Fund adds significant strategic value, including advisory and scientific support. We believe AMR Action Fund will be an ideal partner to help progress and accelerate APT’s mission to provide an effective therapeutic response to the global rise of antimicrobial resistant (AMR) infections.”
Bacteriophages (phages) are the most prolific and diverse bactericidal agents on earth, with the killing function of each phage limited to a narrow range of target bacteria. APT’s antimicrobial technology is based on an ever-growing library of hundreds of systematically discovered, selected, catalogued, and curated phages, which collectively provide broad coverage against many of the world’s highest priority antibiotic-resistant bacterial pathogens. APT is uniquely advancing an inherently adaptive treatment approach with the potential to overcome the root causes of the decreasing global effectiveness of antibiotics – the continual evolution and ever-growing resistance of bacteria to antibiotic therapies.
“Adaptive Phage Therapeutics is advancing from treating patients under compassionate emergency use to randomized, controlled clinical trials,” said Jonathan Leff, Partner at Deerfield. “At this important clinical inflection point, we are excited to welcome The AMR Action Fund as a co-investor in APT as we work together to solve one of the key challenges facing modern medicine, the growing problem of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.”
“The combination of APT’s phage bank, pathogen monitoring, and phage discovery capabilities offers a treatment approach designed to be effective against both current bacteria and future drug-resistant strains that will inevitably evolve and emerge across a wide range of clinical indications,” said Martin Heidecker, PhD, Chief Investment Officer of the AMR Action Fund, who will join APT’s Board of Directors. “APT’s development and treatment model is an ambitious effort, and we are excited to support APT as they advance their adaptive phage bank treatment in clinical trials for PJI and DFO.”
Adaptive Phage Therapeutics, Inc.
Adaptive Phage Therapeutics (APT) is a clinical-stage company advancing therapies to treat multi-drug resistant infections. Traditional antibiotic approaches lose effectiveness over time due to bacteria’s inherent ability to evolve resistance. APT’s approach uniquely leverages an ever-growing library of systematically discovered, selected, catalogued, and curated bacteriophages (phages), which collectively provide broad coverage against many of the world’s highest priority antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Phages from APT phage bank are matched to treat patient’s infections through a proprietary susceptibility assay that APT has teamed with Mayo Clinic Laboratories to commercialize on a global scale.
APT’s technology was originally developed at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) by APT co-founder Carl R. Merril, MD CAPT USPHS (ret) and further advanced within a biodefense program of U.S. Department of Defense. APT acquired the world-wide exclusive commercial rights in 2017. Under FDA emergency Investigational New Drug allowance, APT has provided investigational therapy to treat numerous critically ill patients in which standard-of-care antibiotics had failed.
For more information, visit http://www.aphage.com.
About the AMR Action Fund
The AMR Action Fund is the world’s largest public-private partnership investing in antibiotics, antifungals, and other antimicrobial treatments. The Fund will invest US$1 billion into clinical-stage biotech companies with the goal of bringing two to four new products to market. The concept of the AMR Action Fund was developed by the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations and its member biopharmaceutical companies, in collaboration with the World Health Organization, the European Investment Bank, and the Wellcome Trust. Investors in the AMR Action Fund include: Almirall; Amgen; Bayer; Boehringer Ingelheim; Boehringer Ingelheim Foundation; Chugai; Daiichi-Sankyo; Eisai; Eli Lilly and Company; the European Investment Bank (with the support of the European Commission under Horizon 2020, the 2014-2020 European Union research and innovation program); GlaxoSmithKline; Johnson & Johnson; LEO Pharma; Lundbeck; Menarini; Merck; Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany; Novartis; Novo Nordisk; Novo Nordisk Foundation; Pfizer; Roche; Shionogi; Takeda; Teva; UCB; and the Wellcome Trust.