Visterra awarded R&D contract to advance new candidate

Clinical-stage biotechnology company, Visterra, has been awarded a research and development contract from the public-private partnership, Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria Accelerator (CARB-X).

The contract will provide committed funding of $3 million to advance VIS705, the company’s novel antibody-drug conjugate candidate engineered to kill all strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria. If development progresses successfully through various milestones set out by CARB-X, the total funding may increase to $7.2 million.

“We are honoured to be selected by CARB-X for this contract, which will accelerate the development of VIS705, our antibody-drug conjugate that we expect could be a life-saving single-dose treatment for the deadly Pseudomonas bacteria,” said Dr Brian Pereira, president and chief executive officer of Visterra. “Moreover, Visterra is proud to play an important role in addressing the significant global public-health threat from deadly treatment-resistant bacteria and we are gratified to be working with such an innovative organisation as CARB-X.”