A com­pa­ny work­ing to­ward the field of bac­te­rio­phages, de­vel­op­ing ther­a­pies that use bac­te­ria-killing virus­es, just pulled in a sig­nif­i­cant amount of new cap­i­tal.

Adap­tive Phage Ther­a­peu­tics closed a $40.75 mil­lion Se­ries B, the Gaithers­burg, MD-based biotech an­nounced Tues­day morn­ing. The fi­nanc­ing was led by Deer­field Man­age­ment with par­tic­i­pa­tion from the Mayo Clin­ic, which had been a pre­vi­ous in­vestor.

Bac­te­rio­phages had long been an emp­ty area of re­search in the US, but the field has gar­nered more in­ter­est re­cent­ly as an­tibi­ot­ic-re­sis­tant bac­te­ria con­tin­ue to grow in promi­nence. Some of the ear­li­est sci­en­tists to the­o­rize about their use have thought that find­ing the right phages can lead to bet­ter treat­ments for in­fec­tions and ill­ness­es.

The mol­e­cules are virus­es, and work the same way hu­man-in­fect­ing virus­es do — by en­ter­ing host cells and repli­cat­ing. But in this case the host cells are bac­te­ria. The ul­ti­mate goal of bac­te­rio­phage ther­a­py is to use phages to en­ter bac­te­r­i­al cells and cause them to burst, there­by cur­ing pa­tients.

It’s long proved a dif­fi­cult task, name­ly due to the lack of re­search and fund­ing which is fail­ing to help prove these the­o­ries. Many of the pa­tients who have re­ceived ex­per­i­men­tal bac­te­rio­phage ther­a­pies have al­so been ex­treme­ly sick, with the treat­ments used as last-re­sort op­tions.

Fur­ther­more, there’s the need to iden­ti­fy specif­i­cal­ly which bac­te­r­i­al strain is in­fect­ing pa­tients, and match­ing the right bac­te­rio­phage to the pathogen. Mis­match­ing the two not on­ly won’t help the sick pa­tients, but might end up caus­ing fur­ther harm as well.

For Adap­tive Phage, the funds will go to­ward the ther­a­pies that come out of its pro­pri­etary plat­form. The com­pa­ny is de­vel­op­ing a bank of phages, say­ing it’s col­lect­ed hun­dreds of dif­fer­ent virus­es so far that pro­vide broad cov­er­age against six high-pri­or­i­ty, drug-re­sis­tant bac­te­ria.

Adap­tive Phage’s two lead pro­grams are to treat pros­thet­ic joint in­fec­tion and di­a­bet­ic foot os­teomyelitis, and they al­so plan to use some funds to ad­vance a sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty test to more quick­ly iden­ti­fy po­ten­tial phage ther­a­pies. The com­pa­ny’s tech­nol­o­gy was orig­i­nal­ly de­vel­oped by the Pen­ta­gon’s biode­fense pro­gram, and Adap­tive Phage ac­quired it in 2017.

Deer­field is no stranger to this area ei­ther, as it bought out Melin­ta in March 2020 af­ter the an­tibi­otics com­pa­ny filed for Chap­ter 11 bank­rupt­cy. The deal turned over con­trol to Deer­field in ex­change for the $140 mil­lion of se­nior debt it holds in the com­pa­ny.

So­cial: Greg Mer­ril, Adap­tive Phage Ther­a­peu­tics CEO (Adap­tive Phage)

Since losing a controversial court case over orphan drug exclusivity last year, the FDA’s Office of Orphan Products Development has remained entirely silent on orphan exclusivity for any product approved since last November, leaving many sponsors in limbo on what to expect.

That silence means that for more than 70 orphan-designated indications for more than 60 products, OOPD has issued no public determination on the seven-year orphan exclusivity in the Orange Book, and no new listings of orphan exclusivity appear in OOPD’s searchable database, as highlighted recently by George O’Brien, a partner in Mayer Brown’s Washington, DC office.

A biotech centered on treating fibrosis — born out of Mass General and Brigham and Women’s Hospital — has received a financial boost.

According to an SEC filing, the company has raised $31,761,186 in its latest funding round, which includes 17 investors. The filing lists six names attached to the company, including Meredith Fisher, a partner at Mass General Brigham Ventures and Mediar’s acting CEO.