US-based biopharmaceutical firm Anacor Pharmaceuticals has received a $13.5m research contract from the US Department of Defense, Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) to design and discover new classes of systemic antibiotics.
Research will be carried out over a three and a half year period by a drug discovery consortium formed by Anacor, Colorado State University (CSU) and the University of California at Berkeley (UC Berkeley).
DTRA's R&D Innovation and Systems Engineering Office was formed to search for and execute strategic investments in new technologies for combating weapons of mass destruction.
Anacor CEO David Perry said, "Increasing resistance to existing antibiotics has created a critical need for new classes of antibiotics."
As per the deal, Anacor will use its boron chemistry to discover rationally designed novel antibiotics that target DTRA-priority pathogens known to exhibit resistance to existing antibiotics.
In order to improve medical countermeasures against biological threats, DTRA would use the new classes of boron-containing antibiotics for further development.
Anacor is focused on discovering, developing and commercializing novel small-molecule therapeutics derived from its boron chemistry platform.
