Adaptive Phage Therapeutics Awarded Additional $5 Million from U.S. Defense Health Agency to Support Diabetic Foot Osteomyelitis Clinical Trial

GAITHERSBURG, Md--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Adaptive Phage Therapeutics, Inc. (“APT”), a clinical-stage biotechnology company advancing the world’s largest therapeutic phage initiative for treatment of bacterial infectious diseases, today announced that the Defense Health Agency (DHA) has awarded an additional $5 million to support clinical development of APT’s adaptive bacteriophage (“phage”) therapy in treatment of diabetic foot osteomyelitis (DFO). APT is evaluating safety and efficacy of its precision phage-based therapy in the ongoing Phase 1/2 DANCE™ (DFO Adaptive Novel Care Evaluation) clinical trial.

“We are pleased to announce this expansion of our existing DHA agreement supporting development of phage-based therapies, further highlighting DHA’s commitment to the potential of our adaptive therapeutic approach to improve treatment of a variety of antimicrobial-resistant bacterial infections. This additional $5 million supports our Phase 1/2 DANCE™ clinical trial which is progressing towards generating APT’s first clinical results utilizing our RAPID™ (Rapidly Adaptive Phage for Infectious Disease) technology,” stated Greg Merril, CEO and co-founder of Adaptive Phage Therapeutics. “We look forward to our continued support from the DHA, as well as presenting our initial clinical data from our ongoing Phase 1/2 DANCE trial in the second half of 2023.”

The prevalence of adult diabetes has more than tripled over the past 20 years, growing to more than a half billion patients worldwide. DFO currently causes approximately 85% of lower extremity amputations in diabetic patients. The American Diabetes Association estimates that 20% of patients with diabetic foot infections have underlying osteomyelitis that, left unresolved, places patients at significantly higher risk of amputation.

About Adaptive Phage Therapeutics, Inc.

Adaptive Phage Therapeutics (APT) is a clinical-stage company advancing therapies to treat multi-drug resistant infections based on a phage bank concept originally initiated at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) by APT co-founder Carl R. Merril, MD, CAPT USPHS (ret). APT’s phage bank, the largest in the world, is being steadily expanded with new phage discoveries and collections from a variety of sources, including the biodefense labs of US Department of Defense, internal phage discovery initiatives at APT, and academic phage research labs collaborators around the world.

APT is the sponsor to ongoing clinical trials in Prosthetic Joint Infection (PJI) and Diabetic Foot Osteomyelitis (DFO), addressing notable unmet patient need in those bacterial infection indications. APT’s phage bank has also been used in over 50 compassionate cases under FDA emergency Investigational New Drug allowance in which standard-of-care antibiotics had failed.

APT’s phage bank is paired with a phage susceptibility test (PST) that matches each patient bacterial isolate to specific lytic phage within APT’s collection – analogous to an antibiotic susceptibility test for matching antibiotics. The APT PST will be commercialized worldwide in collaboration with Mayo Clinic Laboratories.

APT’s clinical development program has attracted substantial financial support from The Defense Health Agency (DHA), NIAID/NIH, The Mayo Clinic, the AMR Action Fund, Deerfield Management, and other VC funds and healthcare systems.

For more information, visit http://www.aphage.com