A Novel Ruthenium Antimicrobial Platform Technology - Preventing and Treating Multi-Drug Resistant Infections

MetalloBio is a University of Sheffield spin-out company co-founded by Dr Kirsty Smitten and Professor Jim Thomas. MetalloBio are developing a new series of antimicrobial compounds. The compounds are being developed as drugs to treat respiratory bacterial infections and as medical device coatings to prevent infections from developing at the medical device site.

The compounds that underpin the platform are more active than current antibiotics, have a novel mechanism of action, little-to-no emergence of resistance and represent a new antimicrobial class. To put this into perspective a new antimicrobial class has not reached the clinic in over 30-years. The antimicrobial is in the preclinical stage of development and the coating technology prototype has been developed.

This award accelerate MetalloBio's technology's development and reduce the time to the market, where maximum impact through improved patient quality of life and reduced death rates will be achieved. The project will allow MetalloBio to complete key preclinical experiments outlined by potential customers as essential, including a wide antimicrobial screen of 90 bacterial strains relevant to respiratory infections.

Additionally, it will allow the team to scale the synthesis of the antimicrobials to a level that will allow incorporation into polymers for commercial applications. Finally, commercial validity will be studied with a top 10 medical device company, to determine if the polymer can be used to coat their medical device technology's.