News brief­ing: Lo­cus Bio­sciences bags up to $12.1M for CRISPR an­tibac­te­r­i­al; Old Ver­tex drug heads to PhI­II for de­men­tia

In its lat­est ef­fort to spur the de­vel­op­ment of new an­tibac­te­r­i­al drugs, the non-prof­it CARB-X is award­ing Lo­cus Bio­sciences up to $12.1 mil­lion for its CRISPR Cas-3-en­hanced bac­te­rio­phage for se­ri­ous re­cur­ring uri­nary tract in­fec­tions (rUTIs).

The Mor­risville, NC-based biotech will re­ceive up to $2.05 mil­lion ini­tial­ly, fol­lowed by up to $10 mil­lion more if it meets cer­tain mile­stones. Its can­di­date, LBP-KP01, tar­gets Kleb­siel­la pneu­mo­ni­ae, a com­mon cause of an­tibi­ot­ic-re­sis­tant in­fec­tions like rUTIs. The CARB-X funds will sup­port pre­clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment, po­ten­tial­ly lead­ing up to Phase I.

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