Achaogen Wins CARB-X Funding Award to Advance Development of Novel Aminoglycoside to Fight Highly

Achaogen (NASDAQ:AKAO), a late-stage biopharmaceutical company developing innovative antibacterials addressing multi-drug resistant (MDR) gram-negative infections, today announced that it has entered into an award agreement with CARB-X. Under the agreement, Achaogen will receive an initial award of up to $2.4 million, with the possibility of up to $9.6 million more from CARB-X at its discretion based on the achievement of certain project milestones.

As quoted in the press release:

The collaboration will focus on the development of a next-generation broad-spectrum aminoglycoside antibiotic capable of overcoming clinically-relevant resistance mechanisms and potentially treating highly-resistant gram-negative pathogens such as the Enterobacteriaceae family, Acinetobacter baumannii, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. In 2017, the World Health Organization (WHO) recognized multi-drug resistant P. aeruginosa,A. baumannii and various Enterobacteriaceae as “priority 1 critical pathogens” that pose the greatest threat to human health.

“We are honored to have CARB-X’s support in advancing our novel aminoglycoside program, which we believe has significant potential to address the growing multi-drug resistance problem in gram-negative bacteria,” said Lee Swem, Ph.D., Achaogen’s Chief Scientific Officer. “The race to develop innovative antibiotics is an ongoing fight against bacterial evolution, which continuously evolve to develop resistance to current therapies. We believe that CARB-X’s financial support is vital to advancing research programs, like ours, that have the potential to impact the lives of patients with serious bacterial infections.”

Click here to read the full press release.