EiT Health Germany Series 1: Changing The Paradigm in the Fight Against Antimicrobial Resistance (Alexander Belcredi)
Among the problems with antibiotics is the fact that many are very broad-spectrum, used to kill several different bacteria. What if you could target harmful bacteria more precisely?
Antimicrobial resistance is a global problem related to overuse of antibiotics and lack of development of new ones. Many solutions are entering the market to address the issue: software solutions to identify, track and predict antibiotic-resistant infections and help prescribers with more accurate prescribing of antibiotics, such as OpGEN.
However, we still need new antibiotics.
Why are there no new antibiotics?
The development of new antibiotics, which are urgently needed, is not appealing to the pharmaceutical industry from a business perspective. New antibiotics are intended for a fraction of all patients. So if you develop a drug that’s meant to be used as the last resort for clinicians after they've tried all other options, clinicians would more often than not try to avoid using these new antibiotics if not absolutely necessary.
Among the problems with antibiotics is the fact that many are very broad-spectrum, used to kill several different bacteria. But some scientists are looking at a different approach.
As explained by Alexander Belcredi, co-founder and Co-CEO of the biotech startup PhagoMed, which was acquired by BioNTech and renamed BioNTech R&D Austria in October 2021: “Phages are natural enemies of bacteria. They've co-existed with bacteria for billions of years. A phage is a virus that can recognize the cell wall of specific bacteria. It then injects its DNA into the bacterial cell and reprograms the bacterial cell to stop producing lots of new phages. And so that by the time all of these phages are produced the bacterial cell then expresses so-called lysins - small chemical entities that can open up the cell wall of the bacteria. And at that point, the bacterial cell bursts, releases all of the new phages, all of the new viruses to go out hunting again for new bacteria. And so that's very powerful because it gives us a natural entity that can kill bacterial cells as part of its replication cycle and uses these biological compounds to open cell walls. Bacteria are killed.”
Phagomed so far developed an innovative treatment for bacterial vaginosis. Bacterial vaginosis (BV) is a very common disorder in women of reproductive age, with a prevalence estimated at 10–30% worldwide. BV can have a huge negative impact on some women’s quality of life and psychological wellbeing.
PhagoMed developed a synthetic lysin called PM-477 which targets a specific bacteria Gardnerella, which is frequently refractory to antibiotic treatment. The treatment designed by PhagoMed is currently still in clinical trials.
PhagoMed was founded end of in 2017 acquired by BioNTech and renamed BioNTech R&D Austria in October 2021, which does add some optimism to the general concern related to the lack of development of new antibiotics.
The PhagoMed team has gained international recognition at various competitions and acceleration programs. In this discussion, Alexander Belcredi shares the story.
Tune in for the full discussion: