Intron Biotechnology said Monday that it has secured a new drug substance, SPL200, based on endolysin with excellent antibacterial activity against pneumococcus, the primary cause of bacterial pneumonia.

The company developed SPL200 by applying various engineering technologies and genome derived from bacteriophage. All of the 24 subtypes of vaccine and 11 subtypes of non-vaccine clinical isolates showed excellent antibacterial activity.

Intron Biotechnology has secured drug substance, SPL200, based on endolysin that has antibacterial activity against pneumococcus. (Intron Biotechnology)

About 15 to 30 percent of pneumococcal strains are super bacteria that have multiple drug resistance to antibiotics.

The effect of existing therapy on bacterial pneumonia used to be low due to the increase in antibiotic resistance of bacteria and the components of the lung tissue-specific lipoprotein complex. However, Intron Biotechnology could overcome the super bacteria and improve the therapeutic effect in pneumonia, the company said.

Bacterial pneumonia is rising as a representative disease of secondary bacterial infections as the new coronavirus infection began to spread in 2020.

Pneumonia accompanies the lungs' inflammation, especially in the alveoli, a disease with the highest cause of death after cancer and heart and cerebrovascular disease. Concerns about secondary bacterial infection caused by super bacteria have been consistently raised during the Covid-19 crisis.

Julie Gerberding, who served as director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for seven years since 2002, said that the secondary bacterial infections from super bacteria would have claimed more people’s lives than the Covid-19. She saw the super bacteria evaluated as an unknown risk factor in the Covid-19 pandemic.

“It is a very encouraging drug property that antibacterial effects can be exhibited on both vaccine and non-vaccine strains of pneumonia bacteria,” said Kwon An-sung, director of the Biotechnology Laboratory at Intron Biotechnology. “These characteristics will likely increase the possibility of its use for clinical trials.”

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