November 17, 2023

LyseNTech (Heejoon Myung, CEO), a company specializing in bacteriophages, announced that it has acquired a U.S. patent for LNT103, an endolysin antibiotic that kills Gram-negative bacteria by decomposing their cell walls. US is the third country in which the company secured patent rights, following Korea and China.

As the number of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is rapidly increasing worldwide and the pipeline for new antibiotics is depleted, the number of deaths related to antibiotic-resistant bacteria is rapidly increasing. According to Lancet, the number of deaths related to antibiotic resistance was 4.95 million worldwide in 2019, compared to the cumulative number of deaths due to Covid-19 since 2019 of 6.9 million (WHO).

LNT103, developed by Lysentech, is an antibiotic that targets Gram-negative bacteria, such as pathogenic Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Escherichia coli. It kills bacteria at a faster rate than existing antibiotics and is effective against bacteria resistant to existing antibiotics. In addition, endolysin is known to be a drug for which it is extremely difficult for resistant bacteria to emerge.

LyseNTech plans to apply for IND of phase 1 clinical trial for LNT103 endolysin to the Korean Ministry of Food and Drug Safety within November, and plans to enter clinical trials for the first time in the world as an endolysin antibiotic targeting Gram-negative bacteria in 2024. Regarding this substance, licensing or joint development discussions are underway with global pharmaceutical companies.