DGAP-News: AiCuris nominates Madam Therapeutics with its innovative peptide approach to combat antibiotic resistance as the inaugural winner of AiCubator Resident Status 2022

AiCuris nominates Madam Therapeutics with its innovative peptide approach to combat antibiotic resistance as the inaugural winner of AiCubator Resident Status 2022, an initiative to support new innovative projects, at the BIOCOM AMR Conference 2022

• In the second year of the AiCubator initiative, an innovative, artificial intelligence-based approach by Madam Therapeutics to combat antimicrobial resistance using dual-acting peptides (antimicrobial and anti-biofilm) was nominated as the first new participant in 2022
• The “AiCubator” was launched by AiCuris in mid-2020 to provide long-term support for early but promising anti-infective research projectsto ensure

Wuppertal, Germany, April 08, 2022 – AiCuris Anti-infective Cures AG, a leader in the discovery and development of medicines to treat infectious diseases, today announced the first winner of the AiCuris AiCubator Initiative 2022, the second round of the company’s “Accelerator” program. The submitted projects from the field of anti-infective research were evaluated by AiCuri’s experts based on a wide variety of criteria. This includes the status of target identification, preliminary efficacy data, the indication being addressed and potential competitive advantages over existing treatment standards. Over a period of up to three years, the winning projects will benefit from scientific support, pre-clinical and clinical development experience, and AiCuris’ industry knowledge to advance their ideas and approaches.

“We are very pleased to welcome the first winner of AiCubator Resident Status 2022,” said dr Holger Zimmermann, CEO of AiCuris Anti-infective Cures AG. “Outstanding and novel approaches are urgently needed to address today’s public health challenges and combat antimicrobial resistance and complex infections. The AiCubator program was created to find and fund just such projects – projects that support the development of a an innovative drug that is based on extraordinary and new scientific approaches.”

“The good experiences from the first year of the AiCubator initiative encourage us to continue supporting promising early-stage projects based on new scientific principles and ideas. With this we aim to close gaps in the pipeline, fight antimicrobial resistance and future prevent pandemics,” he added. “We very much look forward to working with the nominated project team and helping to take Madam Therapeutics’ project to the next stage of development.”

The project: Artificial intelligence and a unique peptide approach to combating complex bacterial infections

Madam Therapeutics, a biotechnology company from Oss in the Netherlands, has built an extensive library of selective, dual-acting peptides called “synthetic antimicrobial and antibiofilm peptides” (SAAPs). These peptides are highly efficient in killing multidrug-resistant pathogens under physiologically challenging conditions without inducing resistance. In addition, SAAPs eliminate the biofilms formed by bacteria to protect against the human immune system and antibiotics. Through the use of artificial intelligence, the company identifies the most suitable SAAP variants to specifically develop drug candidates against different antibiotic-resistant bacteria in a variety of indications. Madam Therapeutics has a preclinical in vivo Proof of effectiveness (Proof of Concept, POC) in artificial wound infections, implant infections, as well as lung and bladder infections. It was shown that SAAPs outperform many known antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) that are in the preclinical and clinical phase. The first targeted therapeutic indications include infections of the diabetic foot and blood poisoning (sepsis).

“We are excited to join the AiCubator program and benefit from AiCuris’ extensive experience in anti-infective development,” said Remko van Leeuwen, CEO of Madam Therapeutics. “Both companies are committed to fighting antimicrobial resistance and with the support of AiCuris we hope to accelerate the achievement of the next milestones in the further development of our dual-acting SAAPs, a new generation of resistance-breaking antibiotics.”

About AiCubator

To support early ideas that could lead to the next resistance-bypassing antibiotic or anti-infective, AiCuris began selecting promising research projects for the AiCubator, the company’s innovative funding program. The AiCubator initiative is aimed at academic research groups or recently founded biotechnology start-ups with anti-infective projects in important research areas at an early stage of development that are scientifically interesting but not yet mature enough to be licensed. The program is designed to support scientists and startups to build their own business and develop the underlying ideas and approaches to an advanced status. Participants in the AiCubator program receive long-term support, including scientific and regulatory advice and business development support. In addition, they get insights into preclinical and clinical drug research and the pharmaceutical business.

More information about AiCubator can be found here: www.aicuris.com/AiCubator.

About AiCuris Anti-infective Cures AG

AiCuris was founded in 2006 as a spin-off from Bayer AG and focuses on the research and development of active ingredients against infectious diseases. The company’s main investors are Drs. Strüngmann. With PREVYMIS(TM) (letermovir), a first-in-class non-nucleoside cytomegalovirus (CMV) inhibitor has been developed that exerts its effect via a novel mode of action. It was out-licensed to MSD in 2012 and has received marketing approval in the EU, US, Japan and other parts of the world for the prevention of CMV infection in adult allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) recipients. The company is developing other drugs against viruses such as the herpes simplex virus (HSV), the hepatitis B virus (HBV), adenoviruses, as well as against SARS-CoV-2 and other viruses with pandemic potential. In 2022, AiCuris acquired exclusive rights to develop and commercialize direct-acting RNA-based therapies for the prevention of severe BK virus (BKV) infection disease in immunocompromised patients. In the field of antibacterial agents, AiCuris focuses on researching innovative treatment options for indications with high unmet medical needs, such as life-threatening (multi)resistant hospital pathogens. In 2019, AiCuris partnered with Lysando to advance the fight against antimicrobial resistance with innovative approaches based on Lysando’s Artilysin(R) technology platform. Artilysin(R)s are a new class of phage lysin-derived artificial designer molecules with a novel mode of action and the potential to replace conventional antibiotics. In 2021, AiCuris expanded the collaboration with Lysando with a focus on diabetic foot infections.

In November 2018, Dr. Holger Zimmermann and Prof. Dr. Helga Rübsamen-Schaeff (founding CEO of AiCuris) was awarded the German Future Prize 2018 for the development of Letermovir and her project “Protection in the absence of an immune system – the life-saving innovation against dangerous viruses”.

For more information about the company, visit www.aicuris.com
Follow us on LinkedIn.

contacts: