APT Enters into Collaboration Agreement with Yale University to Manufacture and Supply Therapeutic Bacteriophage
Biotech company Adaptive Phage Therapeutics (APT) has recently announced their entering into a collaboration agreement with the Paul Turner Lab at Yale University. The goal is to support the Paul Turner Lab in their “pioneering phage therapy initiatives” by manufacturing and supplying therapeutic bacteriophage for use in clinical trials. APT is a clinical-stage biotech company founded to provide an effective therapeutic response to the global rise of multi-drug resistant (MDR) pathogenic bacteria. APT commits to leveraging the exquisite specificity and potency of phage in the fight against the global rise of MDR infections.
The therapeutic phages will be manufactured in the APT high-tech facilities (Under the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Good Manufacturing Practice conditions) – the only facility specifically designed and focused on the delivery of phage therapy. It includes a first of its kind robotic aseptic filling system, separate phage amplification and purification labs, and automated companion diagnostic systems capability of rapid matching of a patient’s bacteria to the world’s largest collection of therapeutic phage (PhageBank™).
Greg Merril, CEO and co-founder of APT: “This collaboration with Yale, and their planned clinical trials, will allow us to bring phage therapy to a broader range of clinical indications and an additional group of patients who may benefit from new therapies.”
About Bacteriophages
Phages are viruses that, in nature, are the most prolific bacteria killers on earth. Phages administered directly to patients hold promise to clear a bacterial infection with no adverse effect on healthy cells or beneficial bacteria.
A bacteriophage attaches itself to a susceptible bacterium and infects the host cell. Following infection, the bacteriophage hijacks the bacterium’s cellular machinery to prevent it from producing bacterial components and instead forces the cell to produce viral components. Eventually, new bacteriophages assemble and burst out of the bacterium in a process called lysis. Bacteriophages occasionally remove a portion of their host cells’ bacterial DNA during the infection process and then transfer this DNA into the genome of new host cells. This process is known as transduction. [1]