Atox Bio Inc., which is developing non-antibiotic drugs for treating infectious and autoimmune diseases, has raised $2.1 million from a private US investor. The company began a Phase I clinical trial of its first drug earlier this year.
Atox Bio was founded in 2003 at Yissum Technology Transfer Company of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The company's product does not act against the bacteria, but against the response by the body's immune system to the toxins secreted by the bacteria.
Atox Bio CEO Dan Teleman said, "In severe infections, patients die not just because of the bacteria, but also due to the severe inflammatory response triggered by toxins and other bacterial components that cause necrosis.”
Atox Bio's first products were developed as defenses against bioterrorism, and it received $12 million in grants from the US administration and army. Despite the investments in this field, the company decided to refocus on the regular medical market for hospital treatments of severe skin infections and inflammations, such as severe sepsis and septic shock, toxic shock, avian flu, and swine flu.
The company now faces a major challenge - to show the regulators that it can suppress the immune system while still enabling it to fight infections. “We significantly reduce the disease severity, but we never get to a point where patients become immunocompromised,” says Teleman.
The money it has raised in the current round, plus a grant from the BIRD Foundation, will enable the company to start the second phase of trials on the indications described.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on October 18, 2010
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