Each year, around 7.7 million deaths are linked to bacterial infections, with 4.95 million caused by drug-resistant pathogens. Indeed, antimicrobial resistance undermines the benefits of effective antibiotics, becoming a significant barrier towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals related to health and poverty alleviation. Although it is of eminent importance to reduce the misuse and overuse of antibiotics, there is also a clear need for innovative drugs with novel mechanisms of action to combat evolving pathogens. One promising strategy is the use of so-called antisense oligonucleotides (ASO) to block the production of essential bacterial proteins and thereby kill the bacteria. Unfortunately developments in this direction are hampered by challenges related to the delivery of ASOs into bacteria.
Building on work performed within our lab, we developed a new class of antibiotics that hijack the iron transport system of bacteria to allow for efficient transfer of ASOs into pathogens. By attaching an artificial iron-binding molecule to ASOs we have been able to diminish bacterial growth in several in vitro model systems.
Within this Biotech Booster level 1 project, we will upscale the synthesis of our novel compounds, assess their efficacy and pharmacokinetics in relevant model systems using common bacterial pathogens and work on the development of a viable business case.
