The Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) competition was open to organisations of any type and size who had an innovative way to combat one of the most pressing threats to global health – antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in humans.
This injection of funding will allow Nemesis to expand its research to cover a wider range of pathogenic bacteria in its newly opened pre-clinical facility at the Aberystwyth Innovation and Enterprise Campus.
“We are delighted both by this SBRI award and also by the very encouraging comments of the reviewers of our application,” said Dr Frank Massam, founder and CEO of Nemesis. “The award will fund ongoing work at Nemesis to broaden the number of species of clinically important antibiotic resistant bacteria which can be re-sensitised to existing and newly developed antibiotics.”
Judges were impressed with Nemesis’s innovative Transmid Technology©, which employs modified RNA-guided endonucleases to re-sensitise bacteria to existing antibiotics, allowing them to be killed via existing antibiotics. They felt confident that this funding would contribute to further success, given the experience of the scientific team and the positive results to date.
Transmid Technology© has already proved effective in reversing the resistance of bacteria, with in vivo studies demonstrating that resistant bacteria are returned to antibiotic sensitivity. Nemesis’ breakthrough technology has important potential for wider commercialisation as it can also be applied to the inactivation of bacterial virulence factors as well as for biosynthetic and industrial microbiology applications.
Innovate UK works with people, companies, and partner organisations to find and drive the science and technology innovations that will grow the UK economy. It offers the SBRI award as a way to use the power of government procurement to drive innovation and give small business contracts to solve challenging problems in novel ways.
This funding complements an Innovate UK Smart funding award won by Nemesis in 2015, as well as support from investors such as Shionogi & Co Ltd, the Development Bank of Wales, and others. The company won the King’s College, Cambridge Entrepreneurship Award in 2014
About Nemesis Bioscience
Nemesis Bioscience Ltd was founded in March 2014 by Dr Frank Massam, Professor Conrad Lichtenstein and Dr Gi Mikawa. Based in Cambridge and Aberystwyth, UK, the company has invented, and is developing, pioneering products that will resurrect anti-microbial therapies made ineffective by increasing microbial resistance. Nemesis will impact one of the world’s most significant clinical problems by not only treating antibiotic resistant infections, but also by preventing them in susceptible patients. Large and rapidly growing opportunities exist for the company’s products in the antibiotic, wound care and veterinary medicine markets.