Antimicrobial Oligomers for Biodefense and Emerging Food Borne Infectious Disease

To address the pressing need for broad spectrum, novel antibiotics, we will build on important preliminary results to design and optimize AMOs against food-borne pathogens, importantly expanding the scope of previous results to treat Gram-negative organisms. To this end, we have identified three molecular scaffolds with good preliminary activity and these will be further developed. <P> The fundamental mechanism for antibacterial activity including the role of the membranes and membrane components, the ability or inability of bacteria to develop resistance to these new AMOs and the role these AMOs play on the innate and/or adaptive immune system will be determined. The goal is to identify compounds, or compound classes, that demonstrate potent antibacterial in vivo efficacy against Category B food-borne pathogens without obvious toxicity. Acute toxicity, pharmacokinetic properties, metabolic stability and in vivo efficacy of the lead compounds will be evaluated. <P> The results from these studies will be used to select a lead compound for complete drug development evaluations suitable for regulatory submission. The ultimate goal of the program is to complete all studies necessary to enable IND filing. <P> Based on our previous experience in which we translated an AMO from initial discovery to an approved Canadian CTA in 5 years, the proposed schedule is reasonable and appropriate. <P> RELEVANCE: The need for new antibiotics is pressing and developing broad spectrum agents is a key initiative of NIAID. Our novel approach to identifying leads which capture the antimicrobial activity of natural antimicrobial peptides has already inability on CTA approval. Here the focus is on Gram-negative organisms.