GAITHERSBURG, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Adaptive Phage Therapeutics (APT), a clinical-stage biotechnology company founded to provide an effective therapeutic response to the global rise of multi-drug resistant (MDR) pathogenic bacteria, today announced that it has closed an oversubscribed, non-brokered financing, raising approximately $7 million in proceeds. Investors include Alexandria Venture Investments as well as a large integrated healthcare delivery network currently exploring the option to implement PhageBank™ therapy within its network of more than 17 hospitals and a NYSE-listed specialty life sciences company. Proceeds will be deployed to support multi-center phase 2 clinical studies for its PhageBank® therapy for antibiotic resistant bacterial infections.
“Phage therapy is emerging as the most promising alternative to dealing with the crisis of antibiotic resistance in bacterial infection,” said Greg Merril, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of APT. “The high level of interest from strategic and financial investors in support of our expanding clinical pipeline validates the potential phage therapy holds for patients.”
In 2017, APT acquired the world-wide exclusive commercial rights to PhageBank and related technologies from the U.S. Biological Defense Research Directorate of the U.S. Naval Medical Research Center. Phages are viruses that exclusively kill targeted bacteria – including bacteria that have become resistant to all known antibiotic drugs. PhageBank is a broad-spectrum collection of phages that can be matched, on a patient-specific basis, to a targeted pathogen. APT is advancing the technology through innovation in bioinformatics, rapid phage-bacteria matching and phage purification methods – that could result in an approach capable of providing a precision-matched therapy instantly upon the diagnosis of a drug-resistant pathogen.
In response to urgent requests from physicians caring for patients with severe infections due to multi-drug resistant pathogens, APT has provided PhageBank therapy to approximately 20 patients under compassionate use. Phage therapy for the first 13 of these cases that were infected with either one or more MDR bacterial species was published in the July, 2019, issue of the Journal of Intensive and Critical Care Medicine. The article is titled “A Case Series of Emergency Investigational New Drug Applications for Bacteriophages Treating Recalcitrant Multi-drug Resistant Bacterial Infections: Confirmed Safety and a Signal of Efficacy.”
About Adaptive Phage Therapeutics
Adaptive Phage Therapeutics, Inc. (APT) is a clinical-stage company founded to provide an effective therapeutic response to the global rise of multi-drug resistant (MDR) pathogenic bacteria. APT’s core asset is a large and continually expanding phage library (PhageBank®) deployed with a companion diagnostic to achieve rapid response and cost-effective therapy for otherwise recalcitrant bacterial infections. The technology was developed by the biodefense program of U.S. Dept of Defense. APT acquired the world-wide exclusive commercial rights in 2017. Under the FDA emergency Investigational New Drug (eIND) allowance, PhageBank therapy has been used to treat approximately 20 critically ill patients in which standard-of-care antibiotics has failed. For more information, visit http://www.aphage.com.
