Many bacteria that cause infectious diseases develop resistance to not only the primary antibiotic treatments available in the clinic but also to drugs of last resort which often require prolonged treatment periods and come with significant side effects. At the same time many promising lead compounds with high activity and wide therapeutic windows have failed to progress to clinical trials due to poor solubility, protein adsorption or other difficulties in formulation (e.g. low drugability). LeadtoTreat proposes a new solution to these challenges by introducing a platform for future infection treatment, enabling targeted delivery of novel lead compounds with low drugability, as well as synergistic combinations of antibiotics and potentiators in a nano-formulation.
The primary objective of LeadtoTreat is to develop a flexible, targeted nanoparticle system for delivery of synergistic antimicrobial treatments, demonstrated with MRSA targeting nano-formulations of difficult-to-formulate-drug leads towards multidrug resistant S. aureus bacterial infections.
This platform technology will be demonstrated by converting a highly active, but water insoluble and protein binding, novel compound into targeted nano-formulations for treatment of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections with proven in vivo and in vitro safety. Furthermore, LeadtoTreat aims to identify novel synergistic combinations of antibiotics and potentiators and convert these into highly active targeted nano-formulations for treatment of MRSA infections.
The treatment of bacterial infections on a global scale is facing the enormous challenge of rapidly increasing predominance of antibiotic resistant strains. It is estimated that up to 50,000 lives in Europe and the US and 700,000 lives globally are lost each year due to drug-resistant microbes. These numbers are increasing rapidly, and by 2050, 10 million lives a year and a cumulative 100 trillion USD of economic output are at risk due to the rise of drug-resistant infections. Particularly MRSA infections are a great threat worldwide, especially in hospitalized patients. MRSA colonizes typically in surgical sites, wounds and burns, bone joints, the respiratory system, and implants, and can develop into infection of the central nervous system and in the blood stream (bacteraemia).
