Procarta Biosystems, a biotech company has announced €1.5 million of new funding from the Novo Holdings REPAIR Impact Fund to support development of novel therapies to combat antimicrobial resistance (AMR). The new funding will be used to develop a pipeline of an entirely new class of antibiotic precision medicines from Procarta’s proprietary oligonucleotide-based antimicrobial platform.
Procarta’s lead asset, PRO-202, is in preclinical development to treat complicated urinary tract infections (cUTI) and complicated intra-abdominal infections (cIAI). The ESKAPE pathogens (Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Enterobacter species) are responsible for a significant proportion of cUTIs and cIAIs throughout the world. ESKAPE pathogens represent the greatest risk of antibiotic resistance of all clinical infections.
Dr Andrew Lightfoot, PhD, MBA, Chief Executive Officer of Procarta, commented “The REPAIR investment comes in alongside investment from Procarta’s founding investor the UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund (UKI2S), as well as Wren Capital, Meltwind and Development Bank Wales. The money will be used to progress our lead asset, PRO-202 and to develop our proprietary drug discovery platform to build a pipeline of antimicrobial agents to cover the ESKAPE pathogens.
Aleks Engel, PhD, Director of the REPAIR Impact Fund, commented “Procarta’s transcription factor decoy platform is precisely the type of novel modality that we hoped we would find when we launched the fund a year ago. We see the technology as having immense potential as the basis for new approaches to new therapeutics development in infectious disease and beyond.”
