September 14, 2023 - In a major article in the journal Cell, Novobiotic, in collaboration with an international coalition of laboratories, reported on their discovery of a new class of antibiotic called clovibactin. Clovibactin has strong killing activity against a wide range of Gram-positive pathogens such as MRSA, tuberculosis, non-tuberculous mycobacteria, and anthrax. The antibiotic uniquely binds to precursors of the cell wall to provide efficient killing of pathogens without detectable resistance development.

“The discovery of clovibactin at NovoBiotic provides yet another validation of our unique screening platform that can isolate, grow and screen previously unculturable microorganisms for new antibiotics. Clovibactin is currently in a preclinical lead development program.”

- Dallas E. Hughes, Ph.D., President, NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC.

May 17, 2023 - NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC has received a $595,754, two-year grant from NIH/NIAID entitled “Antifungal Discovery from Previously Uncultivated Bacteria”. In this project, extracts from NovoBiotic’s unique collection of environmental microbes will be screened for new drugs to combat Candida auris, a particularly dangerous fungal pathogen. C. auris has become a major public health concern due to its frequent multidrug resistance phenotype, persistence in hospital and nursing home settings, transmissibility, and high mortality rate. As a result, C. auris has been classified as an Urgent Threat by the Centers for Disease Control, their highest priority category.

“Over the years, NovoBiotic’s proprietary screening platform has discovered multiple novel antibiotics including teixobactin, a powerful new class of compound in preclinical development. Other novel antibiotics we’ve discovered are clovibactin (Novo29), which inhibits bacterial cell wall formation, and several antituberculosis agents. The richness of novel, attractive modes of action of these compounds validates our collection of previously uncultivated bacteria as a source of novel secondary metabolites. With this new grant, we are excited to turn our attention to finding new drugs to combat the deadly fungus C. auris.”

- Amy L. Spoering, Director of Biological Research, NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC.

April 25, 2023 - NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC is awarded a new grant entitled “Late-Stage Preclinical Development of Teixobactin to Treat Drug-Resistant Infections”. This work is supported by the U.S. Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity (USAMRAA), in the amount of $4,499,475, through the Joint Warfighter Medical Research Program under Award No. HT9425-23-1-0376.

“We are extremely pleased to receive this outstanding award from the U.S. Army. Teixobactin has potent antibacterial activity against multiple drug-resistant pathogens such as MRSA. This grant specifically supports manufacture of GMP material for human trials and includes studies to establish the human dosing regimen. Teixobactin’s dual mode of killing suggests that resistance will be very difficult to emerge in the clinic, allowing it to combat several important drug-resistant pathogens faced by active-duty service personnel, veterans and their families”.

- Dallas Hughes, President, NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC.

Opinions, interpretations, conclusions and recommendations are those of the author and are not necessarily endorsed by USAMRAA. In conducting research using animals, the investigator adheres to the laws of the United States and regulations of the Department of Agriculture. In the conduct of research involving hazardous organisms or toxins, the investigator adhered to the CDC-NIH Guide for Biosafety in Microbiological and Biomedical Laboratories. The USAMRAA, 808 Schreider Street, Fort Detrick MD 21702-5014 is the awarding and administering acquisition office.

August 30, 2022 - NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC has received a $3 million, 3-Year NIAID/NIH grant entitled “Teixobactin Development for Tuberculosis”.

Tuberculosis (TB) is a major global health issue and second largest global killer by an infectious agent, second only to Covid-19. Non-compliance by TB patients due to lengthy treatment times have resulted in drug-resistant TB strains that require longer treatment durations and a high risk of adverse side effects. There is a pressing need for a drug regimen that is safer, shorter in duration and avoids drug resistance. Teixobactin was effective in validated animal models of TB, demonstrating its promise to treat this devastating disease.

“Since our discovery of teixobactin, we have shown its potential to treat several serious infectious diseases, including MRSA infections, bacterial pneumonia, and anthrax. Now, we have expanded its therapeutic potential to include drug-resistant TB. We are truly grateful for this support from NIAID/NIH, which enables us to continue exploring the capabilities of this remarkable antibiotic.”– Dallas E. Hughes, Ph.D., President, NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC

August 3, 2022 - In a major Nature Article published today, an international coalition of laboratories including NovoBiotic report that teixobactin kills bacteria through a two-pronged attack on the cell envelope.

“The dual killing action of teixobactin results in highly potent activity against some of the most serious bacterial pathogens including MRSA, tuberculosis, and anthrax. Teixobactin’s unique mechanism of killing also helps to explain why this remarkable antibiotic is free from detectable resistance. Teixobactin is in late preclinical development for drug-resistant skin and skin structure infections.” – Dallas E. Hughes, Ph.D., President, NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC.

May 7, 2021 - NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC has received a $6.2 million, 5-Year NIAID/NIH grant entitled “Developing Teixobactin for Respiratory Infections”.

Teixobactin is currently in late-stage preclinical development for treating drug-resistant skin infections caused by pathogens such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Importantly, teixobactin has also been shown to be highly effective in several in vivo models of respiratory infections including bacterial pneumonia. The focus of this grant is to further develop teixobactin for treating drug-resistant respiratory infections, as well as investigate other effective routes of administration such as inhalation.

“Pneumonia is one of the most common infectious diseases and remains a significant cause of morbidity and mortality due to resistance to current antibiotics. We are very grateful and excited to receive this support, which will help us further expand the therapeutic potential of teixobactin, our highly unique and effective antibiotic.” – Dallas E. Hughes, Ph.D., President, NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC.

June 16, 2020 - NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC was awarded a 3-year, $3MM SBIR Phase II NIH NIAID grant titled “Teixobactin Development for Anthrax". The goal of this project is to develop teixobactin as a countermeasure for a weaponized anthrax attack. Teixobactin has extremely high potency against Bacillus anthracis, the causative agent of anthrax, and showed excellent promise in an in vivo model of anthrax. This grant builds upon these successful results to further advance teixobactin to combat this serious biothreat.

“We are excited to expand teixobactin’s promise to yet another important therapeutic area. This anthrax program will parallel teixobactin’s advancement as a superior treatment for drug resistant infections like MRSA. Weaponized anthrax strains that are resistant to all current drugs can be genetically engineered by bioterrorists, which represents an extremely dangerous threat.  Infections that have no effective treatment can be devastating, as illustrated by the recent Covid-19 pandemic. Due to teixobactin’s unique mode of action, there is currently no known method to produce an anthrax strain resistant to teixobactin, which will make the drug an ideal addition to the nation’s arsenal of anthrax drugs.” - Dallas E. Hughes, President, NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC

April 22, 2020 - NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC has received a $600,000 two-year grant from NIH NIAID to discover new antibiotics by investigating a newly discovered genus of bacteria. Antibiotic resistant infections have become a major concern in healthcare settings and in the community. It is widely agreed that new antibiotics are needed to treat these difficult infections. NovoBiotic is a world leader in the discovery of new antibiotics from the cultivation of new microorganisms.

This grant will allow NovoBiotic’s team to focus on cultivating more of the newly discovered genus, Eleftheria, and mining their secondary metabolomes for new antibiotics. Much like the highly productive Streptomyces genus of the 1950s and 60s, Eleftheria is showing great promise as a rich source of new, bioactive secondary metabolites.

"This support will maintain the momentum we have been building the last few years and enables us to focus on the genus that produces teixobactin, our novel antibiotic in late stage preclinical studies. We are confident that there is more to be mined from these unique organisms." - Amy L. Spoering, Director of Biological Research, NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC.

April 15, 2019 - NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC is awarded a 3-year, $3MM SBIR Phase II NIH NIAID grant “Preclinical Development of Novo29, a New Antibiotic". This grant is to support the continuing development of Novo29 as a novel agent to treat drug-resistant bacterial infections such as MRSA and VRE.

“We are excited to advance the development of yet another unique antibiotic discovered from our unprecedented collection of previously unculturable microbes.  We are confident that the combination of our drug discovery team and proprietary discovery technology will continue to deliver novel antibiotics such as Novo29. New antibiotics are urgently needed to combat the growing problem of antibiotic resistance. We are grateful to the NIH for recognizing the potential of Novo29 to address this critical problem - Aaron Peoples, Director of Chemistry, NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC

October 25, 2018 - NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC is awarded a 3-year, $3,584,158 grant entitled “Development of Teixobactin to Treat Drug-Resistant Infections”. The US Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity (USAMRAA),  820 Chandler Street, Fort Detrick, MD 21702-5014 is the awarding and administering acquisition office. Teixobactin targets dangerous pathogens such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE), and drug-resistant tuberculosis, all posing a particular threat to the U.S. military population.

“We are very pleased to receive this outstanding award from the U.S. Army. Teixobactin’s attractive mode of action, lack of resistance, and activity against drug-resistant strains suggest that it will address the clinical need of combating several important pathogens facing active duty service personnel, veterans and their families” - Dallas Hughes, President, NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC.

February 15, 2018- NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC is awarded a 3-year, $3MM SBIR Phase II NIH NIAID grant “Preclinical development of teixobactin, a new antibiotic". This grant is to support the continuing development of teixobactin as a novel agent to treat drug-resistant bacterial infections such as MRSA and VRE.

“Since our discovery of teixobactin, we have made great strides in understanding and improving the compound’s properties. We are extremely pleased with this award, which will help accelerate teixobactin through formal preclinical studies to the clinic.” -Dallas Hughes, President, NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC

January 19, 2018- NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC is awarded a SBIR Phase I NIH NIAID grant “Preclinical Development of Novo29, a New Antibiotic". This grant is to support the early development of Novo29 as a novel agent to treat serious bacterial infections such as MRSA and VRE.

“Novo29 is yet another new lead compound mined from our unique collection of 64,000+ previously unculturable microbes. We are very pleased that NIH has recognized the potential of Novo29 as an attractive new antibiotic class to combat the escalating problem of antibiotic resistance.” -Losee Ling, VP of Research and Development, NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC

August 9, 2017 – NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC is awarded a two-year, $600K SBIR Phase I NIH NIAID grant "Novel Antibiotics from Marine Invertebrate Microbes". This grant will support the cultivation of novel marine microorganisms using Novobiotic’s proprietary iChip technology. The selection of antimicrobials they produce will set the stage for developing new antibiotics.

“The rise of multi-drug resistant pathogens is a major public health concern, but the rate of antibiotic discovery is in steady decline. This award will help us identify a promising source of chemical novelty, microbes associated with marine invertebrates. We will use our innovative platform to grow such microorganisms, and develop the antimicrobial compounds they produce. These advances address the urgency of combating antimicrobial resistance."— Amy L. Spoering, Director of Biological Research, NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC.

August 4, 2017 – NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC is featured in an in depth PBS Newshour series with economics correspondent Paul Solman and science correspondent Miles O’Brien on the financial barrier stopping new antibiotics. As current antibiotics begin to lose their punch, there’s an economic reality putting a damper on development. NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals is featured as a company overcoming barriers using their patented technology with an emphasis on their lead compound teixobactin.  

November 21, 2016 – NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC is awarded a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation entitled "Development of orally active analogues of teixobactin." 

“This project is a consortium of five leading laboratories in the US and UK with the aim of producing an orally active version of teixobactin, a promising new antibiotic for treating tuberculosis (TB) and other bacterial infections. An orally active drug is particularly important for treating TB in impoverished countries, where consistent access to injectable drugs over a long treatment period can be difficult "— Dallas E. Hughes, President, NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC.

September 16, 2016 – NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC is awarded a one year funded extension from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on their grant entitled "Identification of new anti-tuberculosis drugs from formerly ‘unculturable’ soil microbes." 

“This award builds on our early promising results to find new antibiotics to combat tuberculosis using our unique drug discovery platform "— Dallas E. Hughes, President, NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC

July 15, 2016 – NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC will receive $2.5M over a five year period as part of a multi-center grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIH NIAID) awarded to Kim Lewis at Northeastern University. The funds from this grant, entitled  “Resolving the Bottleneck in Antibiotic Discovery”, will be used to develop and implement a new platform that will facilitate quick identification of new antibiotics from natural sources.

 “We are excited to be involved in this breakthrough research that has the potential to eliminate one of the most troublesome bottlenecks in natural product discovery: spending resources on chasing known or uninteresting compounds.” – Amy Spoering, Director of Biological Research.

July 13, 2016 — NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC is awarded a two-year, $1.48M SBIR Phase II NIH NIAID grant "Exploratory Chemistry on a New Antibiotic". This grant will be used to help advance NovoBiotic’s teixobactin program for treatment of serious drug-resistant infections such as MRSA and vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE).

“New classes of antibiotics like teixobactin are desperately needed due to the spread of drug resistance, and this grant will enable us to produce new, optimized versions of teixobactin for advancement to the clinic” – Aaron J. Peoples, Director of Chemistry.

October 27, 2015 — NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC is awarded a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation entitled "Evaluation of teixobactin and lassomycin as TB therapeutics".

“We are excited to advance our two highly promising antibiotics towards treating tuberculosis (TB). TB is second only to HIV/AIDS as the biggest killer worldwide due to a single infectious agent, and is particularly devastating in low- and middle-income countries. In this grant we are pleased to be working with some of the leading scientific groups in the country to progress these compounds towards the clinic”. — Dallas E. Hughes, President, NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC.

August 25, 2015 — NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC is awarded a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation entitled "Identification of new anti-tuberculosis drugs from formerly ‘unculturable’ soil microbes."

“This award allows us to expand our natural product screening platform to identify new antibiotics with specific activity against the tuberculosis bacteria, which increases the likelihood of treating the disease while leaving the beneficial gut microbiome intact."— Dallas E. Hughes, President, NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC.

June 15, 2015 — NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC is awarded an NIH NIAID SBIR grant entitled "Microbial symbionts of marine invertebrates for antibiotic discovery".

“This award allows us to apply our drug discovery platform to virtually unexplored territories. It is known that many unique active molecules are found in marine invertebrates and it is suspected they are produced by the organism's microbiome. We are excited to be using our technology to cultivate these microbes to discover new therapeutics."— Amy Spoering, Director of Biological Research, NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC.

February 2, 2015 — NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC reports that their recent Nature paper describing the discovery and development of their new antibiotic teixobactin (Ling et. al. 2015),  has become the highest impact paper of over 60,000 articles tracked by Nature of a similar age http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v517/n7535/nature14098/metrics.

“We are very pleased with the enthusiastic response towards our manuscript. Clearly, the discovery of teixobactin confirms the vast potential that natural products can still provide towards finding new therapeutics. With NovoBiotic’s unique culturing technologies to isolate previously unculturable microbes, we are perfectly positioned to unleash this potential"— Losee Ling, VP of Research and Development, NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC.

January 28, 2015 — NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC is awarded two NIH NIAID SBIR grants. A Phase II grant is for “Preclinical Development of Teixobactin, a New Antibiotic”, and a Phase I grant is for “Specific Anti-TB compounds from Uncultured Bacteria".

“The discovery of teixobactin, a new class of antibiotic that minimizes the chance of resistance, further underscores the promise of NovoBiotic’s culturing technologies for accessing new natural product chemistry. The Phase II grant will help support advancement of teixobactin to the clinic. The Phase I grant aims at using our technologies to discover anti-tuberculosis specific compounds, which are desperately needed to combat this worldwide scourge” — Dallas Hughes, President, NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC.

January 7, 2015 — NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC reports the discovery of teixobactin, a new antibiotic without detectable resistance, published in Nature.

NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, LLC announces the discovery and preclinical development of teixobactin, a compound belonging to a new class of antibiotics. As reported in the journal Nature (Ling et. al. 2015), the compound shows potent killing against a broad panel of bacterial pathogens including methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin resistant enterococci (VRE). (Press release).

Older press releases here.

NovoBiotic is a drug discovery company harnessing "unculturable" microorganisms to develop new therapeutics.

For more information on NovoBiotic contact:
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