Trius Therapeutics awarded $28 million to develop novel drugs targeting bacterial DNA Gyrase and Topoisomerase IV

Trius Therapeutics, Inc., today announced the award of a $28 million contract from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a component of the National Institutes of Health, for the development of novel antibiotics directed against multiple Gram-negative bacterial pathogens.

Under the five-year contract, Trius will develop novel drugs targeting bacterial DNA Gyrase and Topoisomerase IV, with the aim of optimizing these drugs for activity against relevant biodefense pathogens such as Yersinia pestis, Francisella tularensis, and Burkholderia pseudomallei. Trius will collaborate with investigators at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories to identify and optimize lead molecules and to test these compounds for activity against Gram-negative biodefense pathogens.

"We will focus our efforts to address the NIAID mission to develop new medical countermeasures against biological agents most likely to be used in a terror attack on civilian populations," said Jeffrey Stein, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Trius. "Trius offers a novel approach to develop effective new drugs to treat infections caused by such deadly pathogens."

"Our structure based drug design approach has already identified a number of promising lead molecules," said John Finn, Ph.D., Principal Investigator of the NIAID contract and Chief Scientific Officer of Trius. "Under this contract, we will optimize these compounds for activity against a wide spectrum of key Gram-negative biodefense pathogens, and along the way, we will likely discover compounds active against bacteria responsible for more common hospital infections for which there are few current treatment options."

Federal funding will be provided for this project by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services. The project will be 100% federally funded in the amount of $27,677,143.