8
BioTech Navigator, March 1998
52 Week Trading History
Overview
Microcide was founded to dis-
cover, develop and commercialize
novel antibiotics for the treatment of
serious bacterial infections. The com-
pany's discovery and development
programs address the growing prob-
lem of bacterial drug resistance
through two principal themes: (i) Tar-
geted Antibiotics, which focuses on
developing novel antibiotics and an-
tibiotic potentiators to directly address
existing bacterial resistance problems,
nd (ii) Targeted Genomics, which uti-
lizes bacterial genetics to discover
new classes of antibiotics and other
novel treatments for bacterial disease.
Microcide has also extended its func-
tional genomics technology platform
into a program designed to discover
improved systemic antifungal agents.
Technology
Through Microcide's Targeted
Antibiotics research programs, the
firm focuses on rapidly identifying
and optimizing proprietary com-
pounds that are effective against prob-
lematic antibiotic-resistant bacteria,
notably MRS, VRE, beta-lactam-
resistant pneumococci and quinolone-
resistant pseudomonas. Since antibi-
otic resistance problems are often due
to a single defined pathway, the com-
pany believes that targeting those
pathways will enable it to rapidly de-
velop novel antibiotics tailored to spe-
cific resistant bacteria, as well as to
develop antibiotic potentiators that
overcome resistance pathways and
restore the usefulness of established
antibiotics that have been rendered
ineffective. Microcide's Gram-
Positive, Efflux Pump and Cell Wall
Programs are focused in this area.
While Microcide's Targeted Ge-
nomics has developed a technology
platform which utilizes bacterial
genetics to discover the genes which
are essential for a bacterium's in vitro
survival or in vivo pathogenicity. Mi-
crocide is utilizing essential bacterial
genes discovered in its Essential
Genes Program as the basis for identi-
fying and characterizing novel antibi-
otic targets. The company has devel-
oped an innovative methodology for
parallel high-throughput screening of
these targets against molecular diver-
sity libraries to identify a large num-
ber of active lead compounds. Micro-
cide believes that this genetics tech-
nology platform will enable it to
rapidly identify drug candidates
within new classes of antibiotics.
Microcide has also extended its
molecular genetics technologies in
targeted genomics to identify and
characterize genes that are critical to
bacterial growth or virulence in vivo
to discover inhibitors of bacterial
pathogenesis genes for development
as new treatment approaches for bac-
terial disease.
Microcide Pharmaceuticals Inc.
Program Pipeline
(Abbreviated)
Program
Indication
Status
Novel Beta-lactams
Antibiotics for Gram-positive bacteria
Preclinical
Antibiotic Potentiators
Inhibition of resistance mechanisms
Drug Design
Signal Transduction
Treatment of resistant & susceptible
staphylococci
Leads
identified
Efflux Pump Program
Potentiators for use w/exisiting quinolones Drug Design
Cell Wall Program
Narrow-spectrum antibiotics
Drug Design
Cell Wall Program
Broad-spectrum antibiotics
Drug Design
Targeted Genomics
Varies
Screening
