Therapy Areas: Oncology
Bicycle Therapeutics Awarded GBP 496,000 SBRI Contract to Address Antimicrobial Resistance in Humans
13 February 2019 - - UK-based biotechnology company Bicycle Therapeutics has been awarded a contract from the Department of Health and Social Care as part of the Small Business Research Initiative, or SBRI. SBRI Healthcare is an initiative to identify new ideas and technologies addressing future challenges to the UK's National Health Service, the company said.

Under the contract, Bicycle will identify Bicycle inhibitors to a range of Penicillin Binding Proteins from pathogens of significant medical concern and investigate their antimicrobial activity.

Bicycle's research proposal was submitted in response to a competitive call for novel strategies targeting antimicrobial resistance in humans.

Since 2009, Bicycle Therapeutics has addressed more than 90 drug targets with an 80% success rate, leading to two ongoing clinical programs, including its lead program BT1718 which is in Phase I/IIa for oncology.

Under this new award, Bicycle will now adapt its ultra-high throughput proprietary phage screening platforms to screen targets to discover novel inhibitors of PBPs, key drug targets that catalyse bacterial cell wall biosynthesis.

Bicycle will target the PBPs of key bacterial pathogens classified by the World Health Organization as either "critical" or "high" threats and which present a significant healthcare concern for UK hospitals.

The work will be led by Dr. Mike Dawson, an industry veteran with more than 30 years of experience in infectious disease drug discovery and development.

Bicycle Therapeutics is developing a unique class of chemically synthesised medicines based on its proprietary bicyclic peptide (Bicycle) product platform to address therapeutic needs unreachable with existing treatment modalities.

Bicycle's internal focus is in oncology, where the company is developing targeted cytotoxics (Bicycle Toxin Conjugates), targeted innate immune activators and T-cell modulators for cancers of high unmet medical need. 

The company's lead programme, BT1718, is being evaluated in a Phase I/IIa trial in collaboration with Cancer Research UK.

The company's intellectual property is based on the work initiated at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, by the scientific founders of the company, Sir Greg Winter, a winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his pioneering work in phage display of peptides and antibodies, and Professor Christian Heinis.

Bicycle has its headquarters in Cambridge, UK, with many key functions and members of its leadership team located in the biotech hub of Boston, Mass.
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