According to an article from One News Page, the biopharmaceutical company Motif Bio was generously presented with an award from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. The award came in the form of funding that will support in vitro tests for the company’s product icalprim, a treatment for the lung infections that occur in many patients with cystic fibrosis.
Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a genetic disorder that can have effects across the body, but they are most pronounced in the lungs. It can involved many long term issues including difficulty with breathing, and a chronic, mucus-heavy cough as a result of frequent lung infections. The symptoms of this disorder can vary in severity from person to person. Other common symptoms include finger and toe clubbing, male infertility, sinus infections, and poor growth. The condition has no cure, but antibiotics are used to treat the common lung infections. Lung transplants may be necessary if lung problems get severe. Most people with CF do not survive beyond their 50th year. Most people are killed by lung related complications. To learn more about this disorder, click here.
The award is the very first that Motif Bio has received from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. The company hopes that icalprim will be able to fight bacterial infections that have developed resistance to most conventional antibiotics. These lung infections with disease resistant bacterial strains are highly dangerous for CF patients. Some types of antibiotics can often have severe side effects for patients as well. The reward from the foundation was for a total of $120,000. Icalprim will face off against several types of bacteria that are common in CF patients and offer strong resistance to many common antibiotics. These include Achromobacter, Burkholderia, and Stenotrophomonas.
So far, the new antibiotic has been tested against a MRSA lung infection in an animal model. This infection mimics the lung infection caused by other bacteria in CF patients. In this test the new drug was highly effective; icalprim uses a novel mechanism of action that is uncommon in currently available antibiotics. It achieved a 99.9% kill rate against MRSA and could reach this effectiveness more rapidly than other antibiotics.
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