Pharmaceutical research company Quretech Bio has received millions in funding to help make resistant bacteria sensitive to antibiotics again.
antibiotics
Antibiotic resistant bacteria are a major worry for health populations across the world with drug resistant infections currently killing 700,000 every year.
Rather than developing new medicines that kill resistant bacteria, Quretech Bio is aiming to develop a new class of small molecules that can either disarm bacteria or amplify the effect of current antibiotics.
“We are delighted and extremely grateful. This money is vital in allowing us to continue conducting critical experiments” says Jörgen Johansson, professor of Molecular Microbiology at Umeå University and co-founder of Quretech Bio.
Researchers at Quretech Bio are currently working on three parallel projects: one that develops solutions for acute infections caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as MRSA and VRE, one for tuberculosis and one for chlamydia. The company has identified substances that have shown positive effects in difficult to treat disease models. With the funding, Quretech Bio will develop the properties of these antibacterial substances even further - and verify their effectiveness.
"These are major diseases - which affect millions of patients - and they are well suited to our medicines," says Fredrik Almqvist, CEO of Quretech Bio and professor in Organic Chemistry at Umeå University.