Drug-resistant infections are set to kill more people than cancer by 2050. Now a new Â鶹´«Ã½ spinout company has been established to help tackle the problem – by developing new antibiotics and bringing them to market.
Launched in collaboration with University intellectual property partners, Frontier IP, Amprologix will develop and commercialise the work of
Professor Mathew Upton
, Professor in Medical Microbiology at the University’s Institute of Translational and Stratified Medicine (ITSMed).
A UK government review in 2015 estimated that by 2050, the global cost of antibiotic resistance will rise to US$100 trillion and drug resistant infections will cause ten million deaths a year, eclipsing the current toll from cancer and diabetes combined.
In the UK alone, the government estimates there are currently 5,000 deaths each year because antibiotics no longer work for some infections. .
The first product from the company is expected to be a cream containing epidermicin, one of the new antibiotics being developed to combat infections caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Epidermicin can rapidly kill harmful bacteria including MRSA (methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus), Streptococcus and Enterococcus at very low doses, even if they are resistant to other antibiotics.
No new classes of antibiotics have been introduced into clinical use for the past 30 years, and the company is aiming to meet a growing need for new antibiotics as harmful microbes become increasingly drug resistant.
Amprologix has already secured industry involvement through a partnership with world-leading biotechnology and synthetic biology company Ingenza.
The new company is focused on four areas:
Launched in collaboration with University intellectual property partners, Frontier IP, Amprologix will develop and commercialise the work of
A UK government review in 2015 estimated that by 2050, the global cost of antibiotic resistance will rise to US$100 trillion and drug resistant infections will cause ten million deaths a year, eclipsing the current toll from cancer and diabetes combined.
In the UK alone, the government estimates there are currently 5,000 deaths each year because antibiotics no longer work for some infections. .
The first product from the company is expected to be a cream containing epidermicin, one of the new antibiotics being developed to combat infections caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Epidermicin can rapidly kill harmful bacteria including MRSA (methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus), Streptococcus and Enterococcus at very low doses, even if they are resistant to other antibiotics.
No new classes of antibiotics have been introduced into clinical use for the past 30 years, and the company is aiming to meet a growing need for new antibiotics as harmful microbes become increasingly drug resistant.
Amprologix has already secured industry involvement through a partnership with world-leading biotechnology and synthetic biology company Ingenza.
The new company is focused on four areas:
- Developing epidermicin for commercial use.
- Discovering additional sources for new classes of antibiotics.
- Using Artificial Intelligence to improve antibiotic properties, working with Ingenza, IBM and the National Physical Laboratory.
- Developing efficient techniques to manufacture antibiotics at scale in partnership with Ingenza.
In a relevant infection model, a single dose of epidermicin was as effective as six doses of the current standard of care. The antibiotic was initially recovered from a skin bacterium