Drug developer Motif Bio Plc (LON:MTFB) is to present new safety and efficacy data for its next-generation antibiotic iclaprim at a top European conference this weekend (21-24 April).
Towards the end of 2017, Motif – which is also listed on Nasdaq – published top-line data from a phase III clinical study called REVIVE-2, which showed iclaprim was safe and well-tolerated in patients with acute bacterial skin and skin structure infections (ABSSSI).
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Data from the trial also showed that iclaprim was just as good as (the technical term is ‘non-inferior to’) the gold standard medication, vancomycin.
Having had a few more months to digest and analyse the results further, Motif Bio has expanded on many of its findings.
It repeated that iclaprim was safe and well-tolerated, with 75% of adverse events in the study being categorised as mild.
Doesn’t damage kidneys
Importantly, iclaprim was found not to negatively affect patients’ kidney function, which is a key issue for some people taking rival treatments.
None of the patients taking iclaprim showed signs of kidney toxicity, compared to two patients in the vancomycin arm.
There were also no deaths among iclaprim-treated patients, whereas one person on vancomycin passed away.
“Based on these findings, I believe that iclaprim has the potential to be a useful addition to the treatment armamentarium for patients with ABSSSI suspected or confirmed to be due to Gram-positive pathogens, particularly those at high risk of kidney injury,” said Thomas Holland, the assistant professor of medicine at Duke University, who will be presenting the data.
Save hospitals time and money
Motif Bio believes iclaprim can save hospitals, and patients, money by reducing the amount of after-care required for patients who develop kidney complications as a result of taking vancomycin.
At the moment, just over 9% of hospitalised ABSSSI patients treated with vancomycin suffer from vancomycin-associated acute kidney injury, which extends hospital length-of-stay by five days.
Generally, those patients require a specialist nephrology physician consultation and acute dialysis, which can be costly.
No resistance
One key issue with almost all antibiotics is that some bacteria have become resistant to their effects, rendering them useless.
Motif will present data at the 28th European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases which shows iclaprim still works on variety of antibiotic-resistant pathogens such as methicillin-resistant (MRSA) and methicillin-susceptible (MSSA) Staphylococcus aureus.
Motif shares were unchanged at 34.2p on Thursday morning.