Overcoming challenges posed by the growing number of infections that are resistant to traditional antibiotics is the goal of a startup surfacing today with a $3 million Series A and a drug development partnership with Roche.
Spero Therapeutics was born last year out of a collaboration between VC firm Atlas Venture’s seed program and Partners Innovation Fund, the strategic venture fund for Partners HealthCare.
The company’s lead product takes aim at treating acute bacterial infections and preventing chronic persistence of infections caused by gram-negative bacteria, like pneumonia, bloodstream infections, or wound or surgical site infections. It’s based on the work of Laurence Rahme, a microbiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and associate professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School.
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Spero describes its approach as targeting a pathway involved in two critical bacterial processes:
“Virulence: Our compounds directly disarm the pathogen, which will limit morbidity resistance development.
Persistence: Many bacteria can adopt a state of persistence, in which they tolerate existing antibiotics, promoting deadly chronic infections. Spero’s drug candidates directly block this persistence mechanism, rendering the invading bacteria susceptible to clearance by the immune system and/or traditional antibiotics.”
Initial funding came from Atlas, Partners Innovation Fund and SR One, the corporate venture arm of GlaxoSmithKline, the company said in its announcement today.
Roche is also providing non-dilutive R&D funding in exchange for the option to acquire the lead program at the IND-application phase. After abandoning development of antibiotics a decade and a half ago, Roche has recently been dipping its toes back in through drug development deals with Switzerland’s Polyphor and UK-based Discuva.
Atlas Venture’s Bruce Booth put some context around this option-to-buy deal structure in a blog post today.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, more than 2 million people in the U.S. get infections that are resistant to antibiotics each year, and 23,000 of them die. The World Health Organization has called antibiotic resistance a “threat to global health security.”
Ankit Mahadevia of Atlas Venture‘s is Spero’s acting president.
