Our Innovation Analysts recently looked into emerging technologies and up-and-coming startups working on solutions in the pharma sector. As there is a large number of startups working on a wide variety of solutions, we want to share our insights with you. This time, we are taking a look at 5 promising antibiotic resistance startups.
Heat Map: 5 Top Antibiotic Resistance Startups
Using our StartUs Insights Platform, covering 1.116.000+ startups & emerging companies, we looked at innovation in the field of pharma. For this research, we identified 96 relevant solutions and picked 5 to showcase below. These companies were chosen based on a data-driven startup scouting approach, taking into account factors such as location, founding year, and technology among others. Depending on your specific criteria, the top picks might look entirely different.
The Global Startup Heat Map below highlights 5 startups & emerging companies developing antibiotic resistance solutions. Moreover, the Heat Map reveals regions that observe a high startup activity and illustrates the geographic distribution of all 96 companies we analyzed for this specific topic.
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Arixa Pharmaceuticals – Oral Beta-Lactamase Inhibitor
Antibiotic drug resistance is fast becoming one of the most important issues in public health as pathogenic bacteria evolve to be more resistant to drugs. The antibiotics prescribed these days have the potential to sometimes be ineffective and may even lead to life-threatening infections in some patients. This creates the need for antibiotics that are able to tackle drug resistance and function effectively. Startups are developing various solutions to the anti-drug resistance problem in the pharma industry.
The US-based startup Arixa Pharmaceuticals develops oral antibiotics for gram-negative infections. With the help of a third-generation beta-lactamase inhibitor, the startup improves the effectiveness of antibiotics such as penicillins, cephalosporins, carbapenems, and monobactam antibiotics. The startup’s pipeline includes compound AV-006/ARX-1796, a proprietary prodrug of Avibactam, currently in clinical trials. The measure of absolute bioactivity of this compound is also significantly higher than other oral antibiotics available in the market.
Acurx Pharmaceuticals – Antibiotics For C. Difficile Infections (CDI)
C. Difficile infection causes symptoms ranging from simple diarrhea to life-threatening inflammation of the colon and is highly resistant to existing antibiotics. This requires solutions that take into consideration the severity of drug resistance. Bacterial infections, without any viable drug-resistant solutions, additionally create a plethora of complications in providing effective healthcare. Pharma companies, big and small, are working to develop innovative antibiotic solutions to tackle CDI.
The US-based startup Acurx Pharmaceuticals offers Ibezapolstat, their lead antibiotic candidate, for the treatment of clostridium difficile infections. The antibiotic blocks the Pol 3IIIC enzymes in streptococcal, staphylococcal, and enterococcal infections. The antibiotic also inhibits further DNA replication of CDI-causing pathogen and is currently undergoing Phase II trials.
AGILeBiotics – Hospital Acquired Infections
Nowadays, continuously evolving bacteria threaten the clinical effectiveness of even last-resort antibiotics. As a result, a lot of patients who are in intensive care do not have any feasible antibiotic therapies. Hospital-acquired infections are resistant to at least two different types of antibiotics and also come with an economic burden to the patients and hospital systems. The complete understanding of a patients’ medical history enables doctors to suggest the most ideal antibiotic therapies to their patients.
Dutch startup AGILeBiotics creates novel antibiotics for the treatment of hospital-acquired infections such as ventilator acquired pneumonia, bloodstream infections, and neonatal sepsis. Further, the startup develops treatment options for multi-drug resistant tuberculosis and cystic fibrosis. Toframicin is currently undergoing preclinical development and is already delivering in-vitro results. Toframicin considerably reduces the propensity for resistance development compared to existing drugs in the market.
Geom Therapeutics – Multi-Drug Resistant (MDR) Bacterial Infections
Bloodstream infections are usually multidrug-resistant bacterial infections that complicate medical treatments. Bacteria become drug-resistant either by spontaneously mutating or deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) transfer. Different antibiotics react differently to mutations of any specific bacteria. Startups work on solutions that cater to a wide spectrum of bacterial mutations.
The US-based startup Geom Therapeutics, in partnership with a Korean biotechnology company LegoChem Biosciences, provides GT-1, a novel cephalosporin class antibiotic. GT-1, with the help of a siderophore receptor, binds with iron and takes a trojan horse approach to attack the resistant bacteria. Additionally, this approach enables a high concentration of GT-1 into the bacterial periplasmic space to disrupt cell-wall synthesis in the pathogen and disrupts its multiplication.
Clemedi – Diagnostics For Multi-Drug Resistance
Identification of the right set of antibiotics to prescribe to patients is becoming increasingly difficult and time-consuming. Due to the rise in drug resistance, it is possible that patients are resistant to certain antibiotics but remain unaware of it. Diagnostic tools analyze and help compile all the resistance markers and other necessary information for pharma research, and also for doctors. This enables the delivery of timely and effective antibiotic therapies for patients.
Swiss startup Clemedi supports optimal antibiotic therapies, for sexually transmitted infections and diseases (STIs and STDs). With the help of artificial intelligence (AI) and next-generation sequencing, this in-vitro diagnostic test detects thirteen pathogens and other resistance markers from a patient’s sample. The test provides the doctors with all the information they need about a patients’ drug resistance. This later empowers medical professionals to successfully manage various kinds of antibiotic therapies.
What About The Other 91 Solutions?
While we believe data is key to creating insights it can be easy to be overwhelmed by it. Our ambition is to create a comprehensive overview and provide actionable innovation intelligence so you can achieve your goals faster. The 5 antibiotic resistance solutions showcased above are promising examples out of 96 we analyzed for this article. To identify the most relevant solutions based on your specific criteria, get in touch.
