Poolbeg Pharma has in-licensed a late, preclinical-stage, potentially broad-spectrum treatment for respiratory virus infections.
This latest deal represents the second in-licensing from an academic source and comes only six months after the company was founded, says Robin Davison at Proactive Research.
The new agent is a nasally-administered RNA-based approach with prophylactic and therapeutic applications in influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and SARS-CoV-2.
It joins in the Poolbeg R&D pipeline POLB 001, the lead clinical-stage small molecule immunotherapeutic for severe influenza, and MelioVac, a vaccine for Burkholderia pseudomallei infection (melioidosis), which was optioned only last month.
The deal highlights Poolbeg’s ambitious plans to build a broadly based biotech in the until-recently rather overlooked area of anti-infectives, as well as suggesting there are plenty of infectious disease assets unexploited within academia available to be licensed.
Moreover, it is noteworthy that Poolbeg has been able to obtain rights to these products against the background of anti-infectives coming back into focus with the biotech/pharma industry post-Covid.