Nosopharm renews partnership with Inra aimed at discovery of new antimicrobial agents

Nosopharm, a company dedicated to the research and development of new anti-infective drugs, has renewed its partnership with the French National Institute of Agricultural Research (Inra).

This second screening campaign with Inra’s Diversity, Genomes and Insects-Microorganisms Interactions laboratory (DGIMI) is aimed at the discovery of new classes of antimicrobial agents for treating multi-resistant infections. These new classes of antimicrobials will then be the subject of patent applications and scientific publications.

Under the terms of the partnership, Inra will grant Nosopharm exclusive access to around 100 unique strains of Photorhabdus and Xenorhabdus.

“We are delighted to be working with Inra again to discover new classes of antimicrobial agents. The exclusivity we have been granted gives us a major competitive advantage,” explained Philippe Villain-Guillot, CEO of Nosopharm. “With this second screening campaign, we are aiming to discover a new antibacterial molecule against Pseudomonas aeruginosa, as well as a novel antifungal agent. In the longer term, the microbial agents discovered during this partnership could be co-developed with biotechnology firms or pharmaceutical laboratories.”

“Bacteria of the genera Xenorhabdus and Photorhabdusare insect pathogens and nematode symbionts; today they are also recognised for their marked ability to produce many bioactive molecules with antimicrobial activity (antibacterial and antifungal). Since the 1980s, our laboratory (DGIMI-UMR Inra-UM1333) has nurtured a collection of these bacteria, which now comprise 650 strains, originating over the five continents. Since 2016, this collection has been associated with the ‘environment’ pillar of the centre RARe — Agronomic Resources for Research,” said Alain Givaudan, deputy director of Inra's DGIMI unit. “With Nosopharm, we are prioritising research into small molecules of natural origin. The molecules are biosynthesised within the bacteria thanks to large enzyme complexes (called ‘nonribosomal peptide synthetases’ or ‘NRPS’), which are true biological microfactories with unusually long genes by design and are prominent in the Xenorhabdus and Photorhabdus genomes.”