COVID-19 vaccine maker BioNTech acquires EIT Health start-up

• Austrian biotech company PhagoMed develops precision antibacterials to combat the antimicrobial resistance (AMR) threat and tackle infectious diseases
• EIT Health’s Gold Track programme supported PhagoMed’s accelerated development from seed funding to acquisition

EIT Health (part of the European Institute for Innovation and Technology) today announced the acquisition of one of its supported start-ups; PhagoMed GmbH, by BioNTech SE. PhagoMed is developing novel synthetic lysin technology for precision antimicrobial treatments and was accelerated by EIT Health under its Gold Track programme.

According to the World Health Organisation, AMR is a global health and development threat requiring urgent action. AMR is caused by certain bacteria becoming resistant to even the most powerful antibiotics available today, due to overuse and misuse. A growing list of infections are becoming harder, and sometimes, impossible to treat, as antibiotics become less effective.1 Amongst other actions, new therapies to treat infections are needed to reduce the threat.

“Antimicrobial resistance is a huge concern for public health all over the world. Science and innovation is needed to find new and alternative solutions to antibiotics that are losing effectiveness, as we have seen from the last two years that we are not safe from infectious diseases. We saw great potential in PhagoMed to contribute towards solving this problem. We are honoured to have supported the innovative science and talented team at PhagoMed within our Gold Track Programme, and we congratulate them on their achievement,” said Jan-Philipp Beck, CEO of EIT Health.

PhagoMed use lysins to fight bacterial infections as an alternative to antibiotics. Lysins are enzymes produced by bacteriophages – the most abundant and diverse entity on earth that break down bacterial cell walls and thereby kill bacteria. Lysins are also very precise, meaning they selectively kill only specific groups of bacteria. PhagoMed’s LysinBuilder platform enables the development of synthetic lysins resulting in a novel class of targeted antibacterials and the potential to revolutionise the treatment of bacterial infections.

“We are thrilled to partner with BioNTech to further advance our synthetic lysin technology to address pressing health challenges,” said Alexander Belcredi and Lorenzo Corsini, co-CEOs of PhagoMed. “We thank the team and our mentors at EIT Health Gold Track for their support to help us refine our pipeline, platform and business model that enabled us to achieve our critical business goals in this short timeline.”

Vienna-based PhagoMed joined the Gold Track programme in June 2020 with a strong team and a promising idea, and were supported over a period of 12 months with defining their strategy and business model to accelerate them towards commercial success. To find out more about the Gold Track programme, please visit eithealth.eu/project/gold-track.

This article was first published on November 9 by EIT Heath.