Piramal Life Sciences Limited, part of the Piramal Group of companies, made a presentation during the 49th Scientific Session of Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC) being convened at San Francisco, California, USA. The presentation titled 'A Novel Antibiotic with Therapeutic Potential from a Marine Bacterium' was made by company scientists, is concerned with the preclinical pharmacological data pertaining to a novel and injectable antibiotic PM181104 discovered and developed at Piramal Life Sciences, Mumbai.

In-house screening of the natural product library resulted in the discovery of this peptide molecule from a marine sponge-associated microorganism. This particular marine sponge was obtained from National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) under an ongoing collaboration between Piramal Life Sciences, and NIO.

Prevalence of antibiotic resistance among bacteria poses a serious threat to public health throughout the world. Approximately 126,000 hospitalizations in US are due to methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) with 19,000 deaths yearly. The incidences of VRE infections among hospitalized patients have increased rapidly as well. There is an urgent need to discover new drugs that can be used to treat patients infected with multi drug resistant bacteria such as MRSA & VRE.

Dr Swati Piramal, director - Strategic Alliances and Communications, Piramal Group, commenting on the presentation at the forum, stated, "Driven by our core values of knowledge action and care, we strive to learn, spread knowledge, and alleviate the burden of diseases. It is a moment of great pride for an Indian pharmaceutical company that its work will be presented at such a prestigious international scientific conference to discuss the results on the efficacy and safety of a molecule discovered in India. Our work in this area reaffirms our commitment to building a diversified and strong pipeline of products to address unmet medical needs."

Dr Somesh Sharma, managing director, Piramal Life Sciences Limited, stated, "We are indeed honored to present our data to the international infectious disease community on a new antibiotic that is significantly different from the drugs currently marketed and addresses an important unmet medical need."

The Piramal Group, led by Ajay G. Piramal is one of India's foremost business conglomerates. Driven by the core values of Knowledge Action Care, the Piramal Group has interests in a myriad of industries that encompass healthcare, drug discovery & research, diagnostics, glass and real estate.