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Company News: Curetis Subsidiary Ares Genetics Launches ARES & CO Pharma Partnering Program
— Program aims to counteract antibiotic resistance by use of artificial intelligence in drug development
Curetis N.V. (the “Company” and together with its subsidiaries “Curetis“), a developer of next-level molecular diagnostic solutions, today announced the launch of the ARES & CO (Antibiotic RESistance Solutions by COoperative R&D) pharma partnering program by its wholly-owned subsidiary Ares Genetics GmbH based in Vienna, Austria. The program aims at establishing an alliance for antibiotic stewardship with pharmaceutical companies and contract research organizations. The program is supported and largely funded by the Vienna Business Agency.
The goal of the program is to counteract antibiotic resistance and to foster antibiotic stewardship by applying advanced data-driven solutions to antimicrobial drug development and life cycle management of existing antimicrobial drugs.
Ares Genetics contributes project-specific access to the ARES Technology Platform to the program. The platform is currently being expanded with tools developed in the The Digital Microbe project funded by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency. These tools combine advanced in silico bioinformatics algorithms and artificial intelligence to accurately model, diagnose and predict antibiotic resistance development of microbial pathogens. The in silico approaches are complemented by innovative and proprietary high-throughput in vitro laboratory methods for comprehensive, functional analysis of antibiotic resistance mechanisms.
ARES & CO aims to contribute to antibiotic stewardship by optimizing the use of last resort antibiotics. The program further aims at repurposing existing antibiotics and identifying novel combination therapies thereby providing new therapeutic options for infections with pathogens resistant against one or more monotherapies. Thirdly, the program aims at modelling the future evolution of antibiotic resistance against novel compounds and thereby support the development of antibiotics with improved life cycle prospects.
As part of ARES & CO, Ares Genetics is currently discussing specific collaboration proposals with multiple pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to explore partnering opportunities.
Ares Genetics will showcase its advanced in silico tools, which are being developed as part of The Digital Microbe project, in a presentation titled “Next-Generation Sequencing based Antimicrobial Resistance Diagnostics” at the ASM Congress on Rapid Applied Microbial Next-Generation Sequencing and Bioinformatic Pipelines held in Washington, D.C., U.S.A., from September 23 to September 26, 2018. Ares Genetics will further use this conference as well as the as the World Antimicrobial Resistance Congress held from October 25 to October 26, 2018, also in Washington, D.C., U.S.A., as opportunities to advertise the ARES & CO alliance to suitable partners in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry and advance ongoing partnering discussions.
“We are grateful for the generous support of the Vienna Business Agency, which will allow us to grow the ARES & CO network much faster. We are already exploring several partnering opportunities with companies active in antimicrobial drug development. The projects we are discussing with these companies all aim at determining how to make best use of the antibiotics that are available to us today as well as taking a more antibiotic resistance-centred approach to the development of novel antimicrobial drugs,” commented Dr. Andreas Posch, Managing Director of Ares Genetics.