Fer­ring buys up PhI­II mi­cro­bio­me drug with ac­qui­si­tion of Re­bi­otix

A Min­neso­ta com­pa­ny work­ing on a drug that could be the na­tion’s first pill packed with mi­crobes has been snatched up by Swiss drug mak­er Fer­ring Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

The start­up, called Re­bi­otix, was ac­quired in a deal that closed Wednes­day with undis­closed terms. The com­pa­ny is de­vel­op­ing a fe­cal mi­cro­bio­ta trans­plant dubbed RBX-2660 that’s cur­rent­ly in Phase III tri­als. It’s be­ing test­ed against an in­fec­tion caused by C dif­fi­cile, a bac­te­ria that can in­duce symp­toms rang­ing from di­ar­rhea to life-threat­en­ing in­flam­ma­tion of the colon. The in­fec­tion of­ten oc­curs in old­er pa­tients in hos­pi­tals or long-term care who hap­pen to be tak­ing an­tibi­otics for a long pe­ri­od of time. Iron­i­cal­ly, the stan­dard treat­ment for C diff is to take the pa­tient off the an­tibi­ot­ic that caused the in­fec­tion… and then put them on an­oth­er an­tibi­ot­ic.

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