The collaborative efforts of Domainex and Auspherix have made new progress in the development of a solution to the growing threat of antibiotic resistance. New data was presented by Domainex’s Jonathan Powell at the 19th RSC/SCI Medicinal Chemistry Symposium in Cambridge, UK, outlining the discovery of three distinct chemical series that have shown promise in this area.

Utilising Auspherix’s background in anti-infective research, the teams have identified three compounds which all possess broad-spectrum antibacterial activity against both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. In particular, Ridaura (auranofin), an FDA-approved organogold coumpound often used in the treatment of rheumatic conditions, was discovered to work actively against gram-positive bacteria.

"As far as we know, we are the only teams working on the challenging task of developing broad-spectrum antibiotics based on organogold chemistry," remarked Tom Mander, Chief Operating Officer of Domainex. "In our collaboration with Auspherix, we have made tremendous progress towards identifying novel preclinical drug candidates that address the growing global burden of multidrug resistant bacterial infections."

Auspherix CEO Dr Neil Miller also commented: "Given that our organogold compounds retain activity against multidrug resistant clinical isolates and they show a low propensity for the emergence of resistance, they have great potential to address the greatest unmet medical need and treat patients suffering from life-threatening drug-resistant infections.

"This has been a highly productive scientific collaboration with Domainex and I look forward to seeing the data generated with our lead compounds in rodent infection models as we move towards our goal of identifying a preclinical development candidate from one of our three lead series," he added. "We anticipate progressing into human clinical studies in 2019, with an initial focus on the treatment of complicated urinary tract infections."