Cadila’s Gamble with $69 billion Antibiotic Market!

Cadila Pharmaceuticals & UK’s Helperby Therapeutics to invest in R&D for development of Antibiotic Resistance Breakers

November 28, Ahmedabad: Cadila Pharmaceuticals Limited, one of India’s largest privately held pharmaceuticals company, and UK-based antibiotics discovery company, Helperby Therapeutics have signed a joint agreement on Antibiotic Drug Resistance Research & Development. Global market size of antibiotics is estimated to be around $69 billion.

Described as the most important innovation in the discovery of new antibiotics since Alexander Fleming’s original breakthrough more than 80 years ago, this is a major announcement in the fight against resistance with the discovery of patented ‘resistance breaker’ compounds. These new compounds are called Antibiotic Resistance Breakers. When an Antibiotic Resistance Breaker is combined with an old obsolete antibiotic, it can rejuvenate it and make it active against highly resistant bacteria. Antibiotic Resistance Breakers can potentially rescue several different classes of antibiotics. Furthermore, this approach requires the development of fewer novel compounds, is less risky and less costly than the traditional “one antibiotic” route.

Elaborating on this tie up, Cadila Pharmaceuticals’ Chairman and Managing Director, Dr. Rajiv I Modi said, “The Founder Chairman of our company, Shri IA Modi, believed in providing affordable medicines for the masses through innovative and cutting-edge research & development (R&D). This discovery will open new avenues against resistant organisms and is very timely in view of global concerns about rapidly growing bacterial resistance against current antibiotics. Cadila Pharmaceuticals’ collaboration with Helperby can help the mankind win the battle against the microbes and hopefully save millions of lives in coming years.”

Helperby signed its first major licensing deal with Indian pharma giant Cadila Pharmaceuticals to take the compound through further clinical trials, approvals and into commercialisation.  Helperby will supply Cadila Pharmaceuticals Ltd. with Antibiotic Resistance Breakers whilst Cadila Pharmaceuticals Ltd. will develop the combinations with old antibiotics.

Helperby, a spin-out of the UK’s University of London, St George’s Hospital has been working for the past 12 years on ways to tackle antibiotic resistance and has discovered a new series of potent, fast-acting drugs which rescue old antibiotics. Instead of targeting multiplying bacteria, the research team focused on non-multiplying, dormant bacteria. Developing antibiotics that specifically target these root-like bacteria has never been done before – in fact conventional methods of screening have consistently missed these promising candidate drugs.

About Cadila Pharmaceuticals Limited – www.cadilapharma.com

With a turnover of Rs 1200 crore, Cadila Pharmaceuticals is one of the largest privately held pharmaceutical companies in India, headquartered at Ahmedabad, Gujarat. Over the last six decades, it has been developing and manufacturing pharmaceutical products and selling and distributing these in over 50 countries around the world. An integrated healthcare solutions provider with pharmaceutical product basket, it caters to over 45 therapeutic areas that include cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, analgesics, haematinics, anti-infectives and antibiotics, respiratory agents, anti-diabetics and immunologicals. It has more than 7000 employees across the globe.

Cadila Pharmaceuticals was the first Indian company to get IND approval by USFDA for clinical trials to be conducted in India. Subsequently, the company has filed 5 INDs with the USFDA.

About  Helperby Therapeutics – www.helperby.com

Helperby Therapeutics is a spin-out drug discovery company from the University of London, St Georges, and has been working for the last 12 years developing antibiotics that specifically target dormant bacteria, a technique that has never been done before.  This pioneering discovery by Professor Anthony Coates and Dr Yanmin Hu is a unique, patented approach that has been found to be extraordinarily effective in breaking resistance when Helperby’s compounds are combined with old antibiotics.