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The MetalloBio approach, coupled with other emerging treatment paradigms, promises to stop the most pernicious bacterial pathogens in their tracks. The fast-killing mechanisms of our compounds rapidly stop bacterial growth and division, so they have less opportunity to evolve resistance to our antibiotics. Not only will this treat the worst-affected patients, by helping them leave hospital sooner, it will free up precious and costly healthcare resources like hospital beds, life-support equipment, intensive and high-dependency units, and ease the burden on specialist medical and support staff.
MetalloBio was established in March of 2021 by co-founders, Dr Kirsty SMITTEN and Professor Jim THOMAS, from the Department of Chemistry at The University of Sheffield (UK). Using ruthenium-based compounds previously developed as safe cell imaging agents by Jim's research group, Kirsty spent her PhD looking for derivatives that could combat bacterial infections. This search was so successful that before Kirsty completed and defended her PhD thesis, the pair were awarded a £300,000 grant by Innovate UK to establish a new company and MetalloBio was incorporated.
Tragically, in January 2023 Kirsty was diagnosed with an extremely rare and aggressive cancer, cardiac angiosarcoma, a condition that only affects 1 in 36,000,000 people. In October 2023, she died following a series of untreatable respiratory infections. As well as being an inspiring, intelligent, and generous leader, Kirsty typified the sort of patients who are most vulnerable to untreatable infections.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) regularly updates its list of priority pathogens that present the greatest treatment challenges when they become untreatable with current antibiotics.
Many priority pathogens thrive in hospitals (where the selection pressure for antibiotic resistance is the highest) and in the community. Resistance genes are inherited from mother cells by daughter cells, and also through inter-species transfer via DNA plasmids. Since bacteria can create their next generation (daughters) 500,000 times faster than humans can generate their offspring, and because bacteria are present in infections in their billions, the opportunity for spontaneous mutations which might lead to antibiotic resistance is humongous.
For these reasons, not surprisingly, priority pathogens are the focus of urgent drug development efforts.
Although there are over 100 antibiotics in frequent use around the world, they are all based on only seven different families of naturally occurring compounds and bacteria and have already evolved resistance mechanisms to each of these groups. As MetalloBio's compounds are based on inorganic chemistry they are a completely new type of antibacterial agent - with a radically different structure to existing antibiotics - and have novel killing mechanisms ("modes of action"). As well as being powerful and broad spectrum agents, they do not readily elicit genetic resistance.