July 16, 2018 09:30 AM EDT
R&D
Pharma

Tak­ing on biode­fense threats, an­tibi­otics mak­er Spero inks $54M in gov­ern­ment deals

Brittany Meiling

Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts start­up Spero Ther­a­peu­tics is join­ing forces with US de­fense or­ga­ni­za­tions to see if their in­ves­ti­ga­tion­al an­tibi­ot­ic could be use­ful against biode­fense threats.

To help find out, Spero was award­ed $15.7 mil­lion in fund­ing from the Bio­med­ical Ad­vanced Re­search and De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty, or BAR­DA, with po­ten­tial to see an ad­di­tion­al $28.5 mil­lion over the next 5 years.

Ankit Ma­hade­via

As part of an in­ter-agency col­lab­o­ra­tion, the US Army is step­ping up to test Spero’s an­tibi­ot­ic, SPR994, to see how it works against biode­fense threats like an­thrax, plague, and me­lioi­do­sis. Those stud­ies will be con­duct­ed by the US Army Med­ical Re­search In­sti­tute of In­fec­tious Dis­eases.

The De­fense Threat Re­duc­tion Agency is chip­ping in $1.25 mil­lion to fund non­clin­i­cal biode­fense as­pects of the col­lab­o­ra­tion, Spero says, with an ad­di­tion­al $8.75 mil­lion tied to mile­stones down the road.

“We are hon­ored to be the re­cip­i­ent of an award and to join BAR­DA and DTRA in this unique in­ter-agency col­lab­o­ra­tion,” said Ankit Ma­hade­via, CEO of Spero, in a state­ment. “We look for­ward to ad­vanc­ing SPR994 through clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment for pub­lic and biode­fense use as we tar­get pub­lic health needs caused by emerg­ing drug-re­sis­tant in­fec­tions. We be­lieve the fund­ing is a val­i­da­tion of the clin­i­cal po­ten­tial of SPR994 across a broad treat­ment land­scape, and of the abil­i­ty of a small biotech com­pa­ny to work to­wards bring­ing these in­no­v­a­tive ther­a­pies to pa­tients in col­lab­o­ra­tion with our part­ners at BAR­DA and DTRA.”

The fund­ing from these gov­ern­ment deals will al­so sup­port Spero’s clin­i­cal tri­als of SPR994 for the treat­ment of com­pli­cat­ed uri­nary tract in­fec­tions, the com­pa­ny said.

SPR994 is Spero’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion­al oral for­mu­la­tion of tebipen­em, a car­bapen­em-class an­tibi­ot­ic mar­ket­ed by Mei­ji Sei­ka Phar­ma in Japan as Orapen­em since 2009 for com­mon pe­di­atric in­fec­tions. Spero plans to start a Phase III tri­al of SPR994 for the treat­ment of cU­TI around year-end 2018.

AUTHOR

Brittany Meiling

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Tak­ing on biode­fense threats, an­tibi­otics mak­er Spero inks $54M in gov­ern­ment deals

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Cy­to­ki­net­ics’ ALS drug fails PhI­II, leav­ing the biotech with a sin­gle late-stage prospect

CHMP gives thumbs-up for We­govy use in ado­les­cents, along with nine new drug rec­om­men­da­tions

Austin biotech Mol­e­c­u­lar Tem­plates lays off more than 100 staffers as pipeline nar­rows

Math­ai Mam­men hands in J&J's R&D keys to lead Greg Ver­dine’s Fog­Phar­ma 

Sen­ate Fi­nance Com­mit­tee lobs more bi­par­ti­san pres­sure on­to PBMs

Ac­qui­si­tion talks on­go­ing for Swedish rare dis­ease biotech Egetis, shares up al­most 40%

Lu­pus drug de­vel­op­ment mar­ket heat­ing up, while FDA links with ad­vo­ca­cy group to fur­ther ac­cel­er­ate re­search

Green­Light re­ceives buy­out of­fer; Apol­lomics com­pletes SPAC merg­er