Cantab Anti-Infectives presented a poster (F-739) at the  Interscience Conference of Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC 2015 organised by the American Society of Microbiology) entitled ‘Synthesis and Structure-activity Relationships of Polymyxin Nonapeptide Derivatives with N-terminal Aminoacyl Moieties’. The results described within the poster come as a result of a multi-year project  where medicinal chemists from both companies collaborated in the design and synthesis of novel polymyxin analogues.

Polymyxins, which are cyclic peptides, are an important class of antibiotic for therapy of Gram-negative bacterial infections as they retain activity against many MDR strains, however their utility is limited by a narrow therapeutic index, particularly with respect to renal toxicity.  The poster describes synthesis and evaluation of a new family of polymyxins with improved antibacterial potency and reduced cytotoxicity compared to polymyxin B.