Adaptive Phage Therapeutics, Inc. (APT) is a clinical-stage company founded to provide an effective therapeutic response to the global rise of multi-drug resistant (MDR) pathogenic bacteria.
In 2016 APT's approach achieved its first in-human success with the rescue of a critically ill MDR infected patient: Tom Patterson, multi-drug resistant Acinetobacter baumannii survivor.
PhageBank™ is a large and dynamically growing collection of phage that attack specific targeted bacteria.
This graphic shows the introduction of new classes of antibiotics, and the emergence of resistance to those drugs. Antibiotics have always been accompanied by the appearance of bacterial resistance. This cycle of introducing a new drug only to have bacteria evolve resistance to it is the pattern that PhageBank™ promises to break.
In 2003, as multi-drug resistant (MDR) bacteria was starting to pose a serious international health risk, National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientist Carl R. Merril, MD, published a pivotal article that outlined prior limitations of phage therapy and suggested concepts that have emerged as the modern approach. In 2010, the Biological Defense Research Directorate (BDRD) of the US Navy began an initiative to explore Dr. Merril’s concepts as a potential way to deal with biodefense threats associated with MDR superbugs. In 2016 this approach achieved a significant milestone with the successful rescue of Tom Patterson, a critically ill A. baumannii infected patient. Tom Patterson’s case was immediately followed by numerous additional patient cases. In response for the need to translate the Navy’s phage research into a commercially available therapy, Adaptive Phage Therapeutics (APT) was founded by Dr. Merril and his son Greg Merril. The company acquired world-wide exclusive rights to BDRD’s phage technology and began efforts to optimize precision phage therapy for rapid, cost effective, clinical adoption.
Can We Kill Antibiotic-Resistant Superbugs?
Superbug. It sounds like the name of Ant-Man’s sidekick or a one-hit wonder English rock band from the 1970s. But superbugs might just pose the greatest threat to humanity outside of killer asteroids, invading aliens, secret Nazi bases in Antarctica or the latest YouTube social media challenge for kids. Seriously, though, the rise of antibiotic-resistant microbes might be reason enough to trade that bunker filled with a year’s worth of cocktail weenies for a “boy in the plastic bubble” containment system to save yourself from the next deadly infection outbreak.
SAN FRANCISCO -- Bacteriophages, viruses that attack bacteria, may offer a life-saving alternative for multidrug-resistant bacterial infections that cannot be treated with available antibiotics, speakers said here. Steffanie Strathdee, PhD, of the University of California San Diego (UCSD), told the dramatic tale of how she and a team of collaborators -- largely working by trial and error -- brought her husband back from the brink of death with phage therapy, an approach that is making a comeback in an era of increased antibiotic resistance.
The married professors were spending their Thanksgiving holiday in Egypt when the husband, Thomas L. Patterson, Ph.D., got very sick very quickly, experiencing fever, nausea and a racing heartbeat. By the time Patterson was accurately diagnosed with a highly multi-drug resistant bacterial infection, he was near death. His wife, Steffanie Strathdee, Ph.D., promised to "leave no stone unturned.'" What happened next is the ultimate infectious disease feel good story.