Vicuron Pharmaceuticals Inc has achieved the latest milestone in its ongoing research collaboration with Novartis Pharma AG focused on the development of peptide deformylase inhibitor antibiotics. This achievement triggers a milestone payment to Vicuron.

"The collaboration with Novartis on the discovery and development of novel Peptide Deformylase Inhibitors continues to make excellent progress," said Richard J. White, Vicuron's Chief Scientific Officer of North America. "The achievement of this particular milestone further validates the mechanism-based drug design approach that Vicuron is using in this, and other, research programs".

Peptide deformylase inhibitors constitute one of the most promising new antibiotic classes and hold the potential to treat a broad spectrum of community-acquired bacterial infections, such as those of the respiratory tract.

"The peptide deformylase inhibitor class of antibiotics targets a novel protein that is essential for bacterial growth and provides the basis for selective activity toward a wide range of bacterial pathogens," said Zhengyu Yuan, Vice President of Discovery Pharmacology at Vicuron. "This new class has already demonstrated promising in vitro and in vivo activities against a broad spectrum of bacteria including those resistant to widely used penicillin, cephalosporin, macrolide, and quinolone antibiotics."

Peptide deformylase is a new target for antibacterial drug discovery. Vicuron scientists have combined their expertise in bacterial genomics and mechanism based drug design, with skills in microbiology and pharmacology to identify a family of molecules from which they have selected a strong lead compound which demonstrates selective inhibition of peptide deformylase and exhibits potent broad spectrum activity against key bacterial pathogens both in vitro and in several in vivo models.