New Antibiotic - Teixobactin - Discovered

7 January 2015

Norteasten University Professor Kim Lewis announced on 7 January 2015, Thursday.


The coauthor is Professor Slava Epstein from University of Bonn in Germany.


NovoBiotic reports the discovery of teixobactin, a new antibiotic without detectable
resistance

Cambridge, MA – January 7, 2015 – NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC announces the
discovery and preclinical development of teixobactin, a compound belonging to a new class of
antibiotics. As reported in the journal Nature (Ling et. al. 2015), the compound shows potent
killing against a broad panel of bacterial pathogens including methicillin resistant
Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin resistant enterococci (VRE). In addition,
teixobactin showed favorable drug properties including excellent efficacy in three mouse
models of infection (septicemia, skin and lung). In collaboration with the University of Bonn
(Bonn, Germany) and Northeastern University (Boston, MA), teixobactin was shown to inhibit
bacterial cell wall synthesis by binding to two cell wall components: lipid II and lipid III. The
article reports that no resistant mutants of either S. aureus or Mycobacterium tuberculosis
could be generated. “The need for new antibiotics is acute due to the global problem of
pathogen drug resistance. Teixobactin’s dual mode of action and binding to non-peptidic
regions suggest that resistance will be very difficult to develop” said Dr. Kim Lewis, co-founder
of NovoBiotic. Teixobactin was discovered in a screen against the company’s extensive extract
library generated from previously uncultured microbes. “The discovery of teixobactin is further
evidence that our unique culturing technologies provide ready access to new chemistry from
nature that can be screened for novel drug leads” said Dr. Dallas Hughes, President of
NovoBiotic.


About NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals LLC
We focus on the discovery of new antibiotics and oncology drugs. While many marketed drugs
in these therapeutic areas are derived from microbes found in the soil, few new classes have
been introduced since the 1960s. Large pharmaceutical companies have exhaustively
screened the readily culturable microbes, which represent <1% of microbes in the
environment. Thus, the vast majority of microbes in nature have remained uncultured and
inaccessible to drug discovery. Our discovery platform overcomes this long-standing problem
by providing access to the >99% of microbes previously believed to be “unculturable”, allowing
us to explore a virtually unlimited diversity of natural products.Corresponding author:
Kim Lewis (Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA)



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