Date: 2012-11-04
Type of information: Grant
Company: Discuva (UK)
Investors: Biomedical Catalyst Fund (UK) - New Wave Ventures LLP (UK)
Amount: £1.62 million (€ 2 million)
Funding type: grant
Planned used: This funding will be used to develop new antibiotics.The award was announced by Technology Strategy Board and is one of 32 projects awarded funding totalling £39 million. These are the first substantial awards made from the £180 million Biomedical Catalyst programme managed by the Technology Strategy Board and the Medical Research Council.
Others: Discuva, a drug discovery company developing new antibiotics against drug-resistant pathogens, has been selected to receive a grant worth up to £1.62 million from the Biomedical Catalyst. This has been further endorsed by a substantial (undisclosed) follow-on investment from New Wave Ventures LLP. The extra funding puts Discuva in a strong position to achieve the next objective, of progressing validated hit compounds to lead status, creating commercially attractive candidates ready for optimisation and development. Discuva has also announced progress in its discovery research programmes. The SATIN platform technology,(Selective Antibiotic Target IdentificatioN), has been successfully validated as a method to identify drug targets. Multiple chemically tractable small molecules have been identified with activity against Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Acinetobacter baumannii, which represents the full range of Gram-negative pathogens currently being pursued at Discuva. These are now being advanced against drug-resistant forms of the target organisms.
Therapeutic area: Infectious diseases
