NovaBiotics’ recent work published in the peer reviewed international research journal Antimicrobial Agents & Chemotherapy (AAC), describes how the novel antimicrobial peptide Luminaderm (NP108, derived from NovaBiotics proprietary peptide drug discovery platform) is highly effective in vitro against drug sensitive & drug resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA & MSSA). NP108 has the potential for application in the nose (nasal nares) as a means to eradicate MRSA. Auto-infection from this nasal 'reservoir' of bacteria is the major cause of MRSA (& MSSA) infections following surgery & other medical interventions. Resistance in Staphylococcus aureus to the current 'gold standard' means of eradication, mupirocin, is increasing at an alarming rate and at present very few if any, other means to address this key hospital infection control issue exist and there is an increasing necessity for alternatives. NovaBiotics' AAC article  reports that NP108 not only kills mupirocin resistant MRSA, but outperforms standard of care treatment in other ways, including being significantly more rapid in its time to kill individual bacteria and biofilms of these pathogens and by a mechanism which mitigates the opportunity of resistance to develop in target bacteria in the future. NP108/Luminaderm has been formulated by NovaBiotics into pharmaceutically acceptable preparations with utility for nasal (& other) use with no loss of activity.

Dr Deborah O’Neil, Chief Executive and Scientific Officer, said “NovaBiotics designs and develops much needed novel antimicrobials to tackle the significant threat posed by antibiotic resistant infections, such as MRSA. The results of our lab tests show that Luminaderm NP108 consistently outperforms mupirocin, the current gold standard, in how quickly it kills MRSA in planktonic and biofilm form, and even mupirocin resistant bacterial isolates, marking a milestone in our drug discovery journey for this molecule. This research has the potential to lead to significant clinical implications for MRSA decolonisation with an emergence of a superior agent to mupirocin based products”.

Link to article published in AAC http://aac.asm.org/gca?allch=&submit=Go&gca=aac%3BAAC.00502-17v1