AmpliPhi Biosciences Announces Publication of Bacteriophage Case Study for Life-Threatening Antibiotic-Resistant Infection

AmpliPhi Biosciences Corporation, a clinical-stage biotechnology company focused on the development of therapies for antibiotic-resistant infections using bacteriophage technology, announces publication of a case study highlighting the successful treatment of a critically ill patient with a multidrug-resistant (MDR) Acinetobacter baumannii (A. baumannii) infection.

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The manuscript, “Development and use of personalized bacteriophage-based therapeutic cocktails to treat a patient with a disseminated resistant Acinetobacter baumannii infection,” was published in the peer-reviewed journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy and can be found here. This case study was also featured in a July 2, 2017 Washington Post article, which can be found here.

The case study details a patient suffering from an abdominal A. baumannii infection whose condition deteriorated over a four-month period, despite multiple courses of antibiotics, and became comatose. AmpliPhi was involved in a joint effort, which included several academic institutions and a U.S. Navy laboratory, to produce a bacteriophage therapy targeted to the bacterial strain infecting the patient. The therapy was administered under a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Emergency IND, and the patient emerged from his coma. The infection was cleared and the patient returned to health.

Robert T. “Chip” Schooley, M.D., Professor of Medicine at University of California, San Diego, who treated the patient and is the corresponding author of the paper, remarked, “Phage therapy is a very well-tolerated and potent therapeutic approach that can benefit patients with multidrug-resistant bacterial infections. It has the potential to help patients with multiple types of infections who have limited therapeutic options and, as a consequence, face severe disability or death."

“At AmpliPhi, we are now developing our lead therapeutic candidates, AB-SA01 and AB-PA01 targeting multidrug-resistant S. aureus and P. aeruginosa infections, under expanded access guidelines by treating individual patients who have failed multiple courses of antibiotics and have few or no satisfactory treatment options,” said Paul C. Grint, M.D., CEO of AmpliPhi Biosciences. “We expect this strategy to validate the clinical utility of our therapies by early 2018 and position us to initiate further efficacy clinical trials later that year.”