Atox Bio was among the Israeli companies selected to take part in the Israeli pavilion in BIO 2010. "The Bio convention has been very productive for Atox Bio"' says CEO Dan Teleman in an interview with ILSI, " and we established contacts with some of the key players in the infectious diseases space that we’re now following up on. In fact, some of the companies we started speaking with at Bio will be in Israel during the ILSI Biomed and we have follow up meetings with them".

Q: Why did Atox Bio choose to focus on the infectious diseases market?

Atox Bio is a biotechnology company that develops short peptide novel modulators of co-stimulation that act broadly to attenuate excessive cytokine responses underlying disease in infectious diseases. These peptides act as antagonists that extend survival and block symptoms of disease in Gram positive and Gram negative sepsis and infection models. Atox Bio’s approach, targeting the host immune system, hence bacterial resistance cannot arise.

The technology is based on research conducted at the lab of Prof. Raymond Kaempfer at the Hebrew University. This unique technology generated AB103, Atox Bio’s lead product, about to begin a phase I/Ib in July for severe skin and soft tissue infections and sepsis/septic shock. Both of these indication represent large markets with clear unmet clinical need.

In the case of severe skin and soft tissue infections, caused primarily by two types of pathogens (Staphylococcus aureus and Streptococcus pyogenes), there is a wide spread emergence of antibiotic resistance while existing antibiotics are not very effective in these severe infections. There are more than 700,000 of cases in the US that require hospitalization. Approved antibiotics for this indication represent multibillion dollar market. Despite the use of antibiotics, many patients need to undergo more severe intervention such as surgical removal of the infected tissue.

Q: What is the market size and what are the dominating forces within it?

Sepsis is a complex disease combining infection and severe inflammation leading to organ failure and death. There are more than a million cases a year in the US alone with more than 200,00 deaths. There’s currently only one approved drug for Sepsis (Xigris from Eli Lilly) with marginal efficacy. The Sepsis market is estimated to worth $7 billion.

In the 90’s and early 2000, the large pharmaceutical companies have left the infectious diseases space (except for Hepatitis and HIV that are chronic diseases) in favor of chronic, large indications such as diabetes and cardiovascular. In the last couple of years, there is a renewed interest in new treatments and pharmaceutical companies, on the most part, are looking for biotech for innovation to jump start their franchise. Companies like GSK and Sanofi Aventis are very active in licensing new products and technologies.

Could you describe the nature of your co-operation with the American ministry of defense?

Over $12m were granted for research by US Army, DARPA and NIAID which assigned top rating in peer review. The research was selected by DARPA for presentation to the White House. The major interest was the understanding of the mechanism of actions of super-antigens, toxins produced by specific bacteria that have very harmful effects and are considered to be biologic weapons and the development of a therapeutic to block those effects.

This major funding and recognition by the US federal agencies has allowed Atox Bio to advance its lead peptide to the IND submission (which we have done last month) working with top US subcontractors, without the need to raise major external financing. The strategic and scientific guidance from the NIH and DARPA has been invaluable to us.

Are you planning to raise more funds in the near future?

Yes, we’re definitely planning to raise additional money to fund our continued clinical work, particularly the phase 2 we’re planning for next year as well as for expanding the breadth of indications in the infectious diseases space. Our investors may include new Israeli VCs as well as exiting investors

Are there any plans on going public soon, or at all?

Atox Bio does not have any immediate plans to go public, at least not until we complete our first proof of concept in one of our target indications.

How many workers does the company employ now?

The company has two full time employees and 2 part time employees. We rely heavily on our network of academic collaborators in leading international institution such as University of Maryland, Brown University and the VA medical center in Idaho.