Preclinical development of novel DNA-based antimicrobial agents

“Procarta Biosystems是一家抗生素药物发现和开发机构，拥有一个独特的平台，可以识别抗生素的新靶点，并发现新的药物来杀死即使是最耐药的细菌。Procarta发现了一种新型的抗菌剂，通过一种新的机制阻断细菌的基因表达来杀死细菌。这些是侵入细菌细胞的DNA短片段，用于治疗严重感染，如败血症，复杂的尿路感染和复杂的腹腔内感染，其中前导分子PRO-202正在进行临床前开发。这些感染非常难以治疗，特别是随着耐药性的上升。该公司正在开发PRO-202作为一种抗菌剂，用于治疗革兰氏阴性菌引起的感染，在某些情况下，现有药物无法治疗。预期用途是治疗急性感染，如败血症，并通过改变肠道微生物组，通过去除与疾病相关的细菌来改善健康。该项目的成功完成将导致一种潜在的新药准备在人体上进行测试，这是创造药物的下一步。通过改变我们潜在药物中DNA片段的序列，我们可以选择性地和特异性地针对不同的细菌，这意味着该技术的首次演示将验证我们的平台，并可能导致多种新抗生素的产生。"

"Procarta Biosystems is an antibiotic drug discovery and development organisation with a unique platform that can identify new targets for antibiotics as well as discovering new drugs to kill even the most resistant bacteria.Procarta has discovered a new type of antimicrobial that kills bacteria by blocking their gene expression through a novel mechanism. These are short fragments of DNA that invade the bacterial cells to treat serious infections such as sepsis, complicated urinary tract infection and complicated intra-abdominal infection with the lead molecule, PRO-202, progressing to preclinical development. These infections are extremely hard to treat, particularly with the rise of resistance.The company is developing PRO-202 as a antimicrobial to treat infections caused by Gram-negative bacteria, which in some cases are untreatable with currently available agents. Intended uses are to both treat acute infections, such as sepsis, and also to improve health by modifying the gut microbiome, by removing bacteria associated with disease. Successful completion of the project will lead to a potential new medicine ready for testing in man, which is the next step in creating a drug.By changing the sequence of the DNA fragment in our potential medicines we can selectively and specifically target different bacteria, meaning that the first demonstration of the technology will validate our platform and may lead to multiple new antibiotics."