Lantibiotics for the Treatment of Clostridium difficile Associated Disease
Martin Handfield
Senior VP, Research, Oragenics
Oragenics (NYSE: OGEN) is a clinical-stage biotech focused on the development of live bacterial biotherapeutics for oral mucositis and in pre-clinical development of lantibiotics for the treatment of serious and prevalent infectious diseases.
Lantibiotics have been challenging to investigate for their clinical usefulness due to difficulties in manufacturing sufficient quantities of pure amounts of these molecules. Mutacin 1140 (MU1140) is a lanthipeptide isolated from Streptococcus mutans that has shown activity against all Gram positive bacteria against which it has been tested. A variant of MU1140 was engineered and triaged from a library of over 700 single and multiple variants of MU1140, ultimately identifying OG716 as the lead compound against C. difficile associated disease. In pre-clinical studies, OG716 showed an in vitro potency equal or superior to “standard of care” drugs against drug-resistant bacteria, in addition to better safety, toxicity, stability profiles and adequate manufacturability. In vivo testing of OG716 substantiated that it is an orally-active compound with excellent efficacy and with a positive effect on relapse, when compared to controls. Through our collaboration with Intrexon, we continue to develop derivatives of MU1140 to expand the pipeline with several other indications.