Fraunhofer IZI cooperates with Nomad Bioscience to develop novel anti-bacterial and anti-viral medications

Press release /

The Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology (IZI) will, in future, cooperate with Nomad Bioscience GmbH in developing anti-bacterial and anti-viral medications. The Fraunhofer IZI Department of Drug Design and Target Validation based in Halle (Saale) and the company with headquarters in Munich concluded a relevant research and development agreement in July 2020.

The agreement covers several fields of research and the early development of product candidates from the Nomad Bioscience portfolio. This includes antibacterial proteins to combat multi-resistant and pan-resistant pathogen gram-negative bacteria, such as Klebsiella, Escherichia, Pseudomonas and Salmonella. In addition, there are anti-viral lectins for the prevention and early treatment of enveloped viruses, which include human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV) and influenza viruses, as well as coronaviruses.

In addition to its long-standing preclinical experience, Fraunhofer IZI will contribute, in particular, its experience in the fields of pharmaceutical development, immunology, assay development, toxicology and in-vivo testing. In a first series of tests, novel anti-bacterial and anti-viral agents developed by Nomad Bioscience will be tested for their safety and effectiveness in various model systems.

The research and development work will focus on drugs designed to effectively combat the increase in pathogens resistant to antibiotics. The World Health Organisation (WHO) considers the antibiotic resistance crisis as being the biggest threat to human health in the 21st century.