A Novel Therapy for Urinary Tract Infections
UTIs are the most common bacterial infections affecting 400 million people per year worldwide, with a treatment market is estimated at $9.89 billion. Up to 80% of UTIs are caused by uropathogenic E. coli that regularly form biofilms in the bladder or on indwelling catheters, leading to treatment failure and progression to more serious illness such as bacteraemia. E. coli is the main cause of bacteraemias in the UK and US with around 30% of cases resulting in death. In the UK, UTI treatment takes up a large proportion of NHS resources and the annual cost of UTI management in England alone is over £400 million.
Currently, there are no antibiofilm drugs available for UTIs. Treatment relies exclusively on antibiotics, which generally have poor antibiofilm activity, leading to chronic and recurrent UTIs. Consequently, UTIs is the main indication of antibiotic prescribing in primary care, leading to increased AMR and a significant healthcare burden. Using 10+ years of extensive research at the Department of Genetics at the University of Cambridge, Dr Ashraf Zarkan and Dr David Summers developed small-molecule antibiofilms with proven effectiveness against a collection of uropathogenic strains of E. coli. They demonstrated that their antibiofilm compounds have a suitable profile for development as an oral therapy for UTIs.
A biofilm from a uropathogenic strain of E. coli before (left) and after (right) the addition of one of BioTryp’s antibiofilms.
BioTryp Therapeutics, a start-up founded by Dr Zarkan and Dr Summers are developing the first antibiofilm oral therapy for bacterial infections. BioTryp’s antibiofilm treatment will have a significant indirect value by releasing resources in healthcare, in addition to the direct benefit for patients suffering with UTIs.
Before founding BioTryp Therapeutics, Dr Zarkan and Dr Summers (as the Early Career Researcher and the Senior Scientist, respectively) took part in the first NBIC Biofilms ICURe Sprint – an accelerated version of the well-established Innovate UK Innovation to Commercialisation of University Research (ICURe) programme, which was funded by NBIC and delivered by SETsquared. Dr Zarkan said,
“Getting to meet other people in the NBIC network who are working with biofilms, having that expert community, as well as getting to learn from people who are trying to embark on similar journeys; all of this was extremely valuable. With NBIC’s support we managed to transform our university project into a new company.”
Following the programme, Dr Zarkan and Dr Summers founded their start-up, which has celebrated many successes, including; partnering with Spin Up Ventures, participating in the Innovate UK Microbials Accelerator, taking part in the EnterpriseTECH programme at the Cambridge Judge Business School, joining the University of Cambridge Founders Start Accelerator, winning the 2024 Hellings Prize at The Trinity Bradfield Prize event based at the University of Cambridge, and more recently closing a pre-seed round of investment.
The BioTryp team are now looking forward to a new collaboration with a US-based drug discovery company, X-Chem, Inc. to move closer to clinical trials.