Unique Innovations towards Eco-responsible Antibacterial Therapies

Da Volterra conducts several R&D Programs currently at Discovery and Preclinical Stages :

DAV-121 and DAV-132

Those two compounds are developed as adjuvants to current antibiotherapies with two objectives :

• Decrease significantly side effects of current antibiotics for patients under treatment
• Prevent emergence and dissemination of resistance in the commensal flora, therefore minimizing nosocomial infections in hospital settings as well as in the community, and prolonging the life span of novel antibiotics.

It is indeed well-known that orally administered antibiotics are only partially adsorbed, and that 10-50% of the  administered drug (depending on the antibiotic) remains intact in the GI tract. Moreover, a fraction of the absorbed antibiotic is recycled via the hepatobiliary route from the blood into the small intestine; in the case of i.m. or i.v. administered antibiotics, only the latter mechanism is involved, yet is sufficient to recycle a significant amount of antibiotic into the GI tract. The drug progresses intact to the colon, at doses that are orders of magnitude higher than the MIC (minimum inhibitory concentration) for most commensal bacteria, and therefore efficiently acts to select resistant bacteria amongst the commensal flora of patients and enable them within days to massively grow in place of the sensitive commensal species that have been eliminated.

Da Volterra develops oral products which deliver to the lower part of the intestine agents that inactivate in situ the residual antibiotics that can be present after oral or parenteral antibiotic treatments  and subsequently prevent antibiotics from enabling the selection, proliferation, and subsequent spread, of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

  
DAV-121 and DAV-132 are either enzymatic agents which can destroy certain antibiotic residues from one family of antibiotics, or non specific chemical agents which can mechanically block the activity of antibiotics.

 To achieve an efficient development of its products, Da Volterra relies on a combination of highly skilled research in drug delivery development, enzyme production, preclinical pharmacology and bacteriology. To date, several innovative technologies and products have been developed, tested and patented. Da Volterra has completed the preclinical evaluation of its product in animal studies and is ready to move forward with human testing in clinical study within the next 2 years.

 
Designed to be co-prescribed with antibiotics, Da Volterra’s DAV-121 and DAV-132 products should significantly reduce the burden caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria and therefore be enthusiastically welcomed by the medical and public health authorities. They should also prolong the lifespan of antibiotic medications currently available and consequently raise high interest among investors and actors of the pharmaceutical industry.

 Da Volterra products represent a unique breakthrough innovation finally allowing clinicians and pharmaceutical groups to envision “eco-responsible antibiotherapies” : a solution that fits completely with the major worldwide public health concern of resistance to antibiotics, by promoting the durable and sustainable use of our presently available resources.

DAV-147 and DAV-148

DAV-148 addresses the major issue encountered to date and with increasing prevalence in the future with multiresistant Gram negative enterobacteria carrying resistance genes to third generation cephalosporins and/or carbapenems. 

The product under development is designed to help decontaminating “patients at risk of infection” in hospitals, such as ICU patients, immunodeficient patients (transplantation, aplasia…), hemato-oncology patients under chemotherapy, as well as healthy carriers of intestinal Gram-negative (GN) bacteria,. These patients, which are detected at hospital admission or before a surgical procedure and which are high risk patients for nosocomial infections/dissemination will surely benefit for such an innovative  treatment.   

 DAV-147 adresses a similar targeted action on multiresistant Gram positive bacteria and Clostridium difficile infections.

DAV-X

Using Da Volterra’s bacteriology platform, expertise in understanding resistance-mechanisms and protein/compound drug delivery proprietary technologies, several other exploratory programs have been launched to address other therapeutic actions to combat antibiotic resistance, and are currently in discovery.

For most of these programs, information is still confidential as patents can not yet be communicated.