LeadtoTreat 3rd progress meeting

The LeadtoTreat consortium held its third progress meeting in Oslo on the 17th-19th October 2023. The two meeting days were used to discuss the past and ongoing activities as well as planning the next activities. All work package leaders presented the status of the project summarizing scientific and management results since the project start. A part of the meeting was dedicated to the exploitation work, including review of the market for MRSA anti-infectives, IP landscape and commercialization of antibiotics. The project is progressing according to the plan, and here are some of the highlights summarising our activities:

• Following an initial screen of combinatorial effects between antibiotics and potentiators, we have performed a secondary screen with an extended strain panel to verify potential synergistic combinations. From these results, combinations of antibiotics and potentiators with synergistic effects on MRSA have been identified.
• The partner NanoTag have successfully immunised alpacas with different MRSA antigens and many nanobodies candidates have been selected for further validation
• Following optimisation of the fermentation process, we have produced and purified lead candidate MBL-AB01
• Nanoformulations of MBL-AB01 were produced, characterised and tested against MRSA.
• The project has been presented at two conferences in 2023
• A face-to-face meeting with external consultant Eckhard Schwenner has been organized
• Patent landscape for polyphosphazene-based material and nanoformulations for antibiotics have been reviewed and analysed
• We have reviewed the existing market for MRSA drugs, drugs in the pipeline and discussed the finding in the context of commercialization.

The achieved results and the coming activities were extensively discussed by all participants, and plans for future activities have been concretized. All in all, the 3rd progress meeting in Oslo was highly productive and enjoyed by all participants.