Locus Biosciences today announced a contract award from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), of $3.3 million with further funding of up to a total of $28 million available over the course of the contract if all project milestones are met. The awarded contract will support a proof-of-concept clinical trial of LBP-PA01, an AI-designed bacteriophage therapeutic for hospital-acquired pneumonia (HAP) and ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) caused by antibiotic-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria.
Under contract No. 75N93025C00035, NIAID will fund a Phase 1b clinical trial of LBP-PA01, enabling Locus to evaluate safety, efficacy, and optimal dosing in patients with P. aeruginosa infections that have become increasingly difficult to treat using conventional antibiotics.
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Locus created LBP-PA01 using its AI-driven discovery engine, where robotics and machine learning converge to rapidly design next-generation engineered bacteriophage therapies. This platform experimentally measures millions of phage-bacteria interactions and uses these outcomes to simulate over a quadrillion (one million billion) potential phage combinations in silico, identifying the most effective therapeutic cocktail candidates. Within this framework, multimodal large language models trained on genomic and functional datasets predict optimal genomic engineering configurations for incorporating antibacterial payloads, enabling precise synthetic biology optimization of phage genomes to enhance the killing of target pathogens. By integrating automation and AI, the Locus platform compresses what once took years of trial-and-error into weeks of systematic testing, enabling a rapid response to emerging drug-resistant pathogens.
“Partnering with HHS to advance multiple programs under NIAID and BARDA is an exciting evolution for Locus as we deploy our platform to deliver precision antibacterial therapies across diverse indications and routes of administration,” said Paul Garofolo, CEO of Locus Biosciences. “With NIAID driving innovation targeting respiratory infections and BARDA advancing solutions for urinary tract infections, we are united under a shared mission to solve the global antimicrobial resistance crisis. This collaboration underscores the power of Locus’s AI-enabled drug development platform and its advanced U.S.-based manufacturing to accelerate a new generation of engineered bacteriophage therapeutics.”
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