V. Balasubramanian, PhD. COO and Head of R&D

Bugworks Research India Pvt. Ltd. C-CAMP, NCBS Campus, Hebbal, Bengaluru 560065, India

Bugworks is at the forefront of the scientific innovation to deliver novel antibiotics, which will address the alarming threat of anti-microbial resistance. With its years of domain experience, collaborations across the globe and through its innovative approaches, a new chemical entity (NCE) effective on all known resistance mechanisms was discovered from within the C-CAMP incubator. Bugworks won the 2017 CARB-X global grant to discover novel antibiotics and successfully completed the 2nd CARB-X milestone in 2020 by selecting a clinical candidate, BWC0977, that will start First Time in Human (Phase 1) studies in March 2021. BWC0977 covers the entire spectrum of the WHO 2017 R&D Priority Pathogens & the CDC’s 2019 AR Threats. It exhibits potent killing of pan-resistant superbugs such as E. coli (including ESBLs, NDM-1 etc.), K. pneumoniae (including KPCs), multi-drug resistant A. baumannii, multi-drug resistant P. aeruginosa, multi-drug resistant N. gonorrhoeae, H. influenza, Proteus sp., Citrobacter sp., Morganella sp., C. difficile, S. typhi, Shigella spp., H. pylori, S. aureus (including MRSA), E. faecalis (including VRE), S. pyogenes, S. pneumoniae, S. epidermidis and bio-threat pathogens such as Bacillus anthracis, Yersinia pestis, Francisella tularensis, Burkholderia mallei, Burkholderia pseudomallei. It is highly bactericidal in thigh, lung and urinary tract infection models in mice and rats following oral and parenteral administration. It has adequate therapeutic margins based on pre-clinical toxicology studies and has the potential to address a broad spectrum of indications such as complicated urinary tract infections (cUTI), complicated intra-abdominal infections (cIAI), hospital associated bacterial pneumonia (HABP), ventilator associated pneumonia (VABP), acute bacterial skin and soft structure infections (ABSSSI) etc.  Not since the introduction of the fluroquinolones in the 1960’s has there been a drug candidate like BWC0977 that has the potential to treat the full spectrum bacterial diseases with the choice of parenteral and oral route of administration.