Microbiological data confirm potent activity of AR-709 againt multi-drug resistant S. pneumoniae

24-May-2006

Arpida Ltd. announced positive results from in vitro microbiological studies conducted with AR-709, a broad-spectrum, bactericidal antibiotic that Arpida is developing for the treatment of upper and lower Respiratory Tract Infections (RTI) contracted in the community setting. AR-709 is in the IND-enabling stage and is expected to enter 'first-in-man' clinical trials in 2006.

The in vitro studies comprised a total of 451 Streptococcus pneumoniae clinical isolates and were conducted by Prof. Peter Appelbaum at Hershey Medical Center, Pennsylvania and Prof. Dana Milatovic at the Eijkman-Winkler Institute, University of Utrecht, Netherlands. The aim of the studies was to determine the activity of AR-709 against panels of 300 and 151 Streptococcus pneumoniae clinical isolates collected in the USA and Europe, respectively. All isolates have been phenotypically and genotypically characterised to determine their resistance profile to major antibiotic classes currently in use such as penicillins, cotrimoxazole, macrolides and fluoroquinolones.

The isolates from the USA or Europe included 41% or 37% penicillin-intermediate, 26% or 38% penicillin-resistant, 53% or 39% cotrimoxazole-resistant, and 53% or 38% macrolide-resistant clinical isolates, respectively. In addition, 10% of isolates from the USA were resistant to fluoroquinolones including levofloxacin. The 158 macrolide-resistant isolates from the USA contained all known macrolide resistance phenotypes including 66 isolates with erm(B), 59 mef(E), 1 erm(B) + mef(E), 4 erm(A), 23 L4, 4 23S rRNA ribosomal protein mutations; 1 strain is still being genotypically characterised. In total, 31% and 17% of isolates from the USA and Europe, respectively, were multi-drug resistant (MDR) isolates exhibiting resistance to at least three antibiotic classes.

Encouragingly, AR-709 exhibited potent activity against all of the isolates tested irrespective of the type and pattern of resistance.

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