Destiny Pharma advances strategy against bacteria
Destiny Pharma, one of our longstanding clients, featured in the April 2023 edition of MedNous, the specialist medical research journal. Neil Clark, CEO, and Dr Bill Love, Founder and CSO, sat down with Victoria English to discuss the fantastic progress that has been made with Destiny’s two lead assets, XF-73, a nasal gel for the treatment of post-surgical infections arising from Staphylococcus aureus, and NTCD-M3, for the treatment of Clostridioides difficile. Both assets have recently been positively reviewed in scientific journals, and NTCD-M3 has secured a major US licensing agreement with Sebela Pharmaceuticals Inc worth up to US$570m plus royalties.
In the insightful article, Dr Love explained that XF-73, which is building towards launching Phase 3 trials in 2024, binds to the outer membrane of the target bacteria, causing the membrane to become leaky at a microscopic level, allowing the bacteria to be killed very rapidly. Dr Love adds, “It’s that loss of vital components within minutes, whether the bacteria are active or not active, that kills the bacteria.”
The discussion then moved onto Destiny’s NTCD-M3 asset, where Victoria English highlighted the non-toxigenic strain of CDI that is used, which lacks the genes to express toxic strains of the bacterium. Dr Love comments that, “the non-toxigenic C.Difficile strain occupies the ecological niche within the gut that the toxigenic strain could have, or would have occupied, had our strain not been administered.” This forces out the toxic strain and doesn’t allow it to become established in the microbiome.
Learn more by reading the full article below which was published in the April 2023 edition of MedNous, a publication of Evernow Publishing Ltd.
MedNous Destiny Pharma advances strategy against bacteria April 2023
