NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals is a privately held, early-stage biotechnology company focused on the discovery and development of new drugs from natural sources.

Early history and focus

The company was founded in 2003 in Cambridge, MA (USA), by

Northeastern University Northeastern University (NU) is a private university, private research university with its main campus in Boston. Established in 1898, the university offers undergraduate and graduate programs on its main campus as well as satellite campuses in ...

professors Kim Lewis and Slava Epstein. Lewis is the director of Northeastern’s

Antimicrobial Discovery Center An antimicrobial is an agent that kills microorganisms or stops their growth. Antimicrobial medicines can be grouped according to the microorganisms they act primarily against. For example, antibiotics are used against bacteria, and antifungals ar ...

, while Epstein is on the faculty of the Department of Biology. Both Lewis and Epstein are paid consultants to this company. The focus of the company is on the discovery of new antibiotics and oncology drugs.

Research and drug development

The founders had led the development of new techniques to search for useful molecules produced by the untapped vast majority of soil and marine bacteria that cannot be initially cultured in the laboratory. They developed diffusion chambers ( isolation chips) to be embedded in natural settings to grow "uncultivable" microorganisms ''in situ'', so that they could then be extracted for study. A patent for these techniques is held by

, and licensed to NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals. Over the years NovoBiotic has amassed a large collection of previously uncultivated microorganisms utilizing the diffusion chamber, and screens them for antibiotic activity. NovoBiotic holds the patent rights to any potentially useful molecules that are extracted, identified and characterized. This approach has resulted the discovery of several new antibiotic compounds, including teixobactin.

Teixobactin

NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals owns the patent rights to teixobactin, an

antibiotic An antibiotic is a type of antimicrobial substance active against bacteria. It is the most important type of antibacterial agent for fighting bacterial infections, and antibiotic medications are widely used in the treatment and prevention of ...

that has been shown to be active against pathogenic

Gram-positive bacteria In bacteriology, gram-positive bacteria are bacteria that give a positive result in the Gram stain test, which is traditionally used to quickly classify bacteria into two broad categories according to their type of cell wall. Gram-positive bact ...

that have developed

resistance Resistance may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Comics * Either of two similarly named but otherwise unrelated comic book series, both published by Wildstorm: ** ''Resistance'' (comics), based on the video game of the same title ** ''T ...

to available approved antibiotics. The discovery and characterization of the compound was reported in 2015 in a collaboration between NovoBiotic, Northeastern University (Boston MA), University of Bonn (Germany) and Selcia Ltd. (UK). Teixobactin is believed to be more robust against mutation of the target pathogens because of its unusual antibiotic mechanism. Rather than binding to relatively mutable proteins in the bacterial cells, it binds to less mutable fatty molecules that are essential cell wall precursors.

References

External References

Official home page
{{Pharmaceutical companies of the United States Pharmaceutical companies of the United States Health care companies based in Massachusetts