Achaogen Wins CARB-X Funding Award to Advance Development of Novel Aminoglycoside to Fight Highly-Resistant Infections

-- CARB-X funding to support Achaogen’s early-stage aminoglycoside program developing antibiotics for difficult to treat infections that are associated with high mortality --

-- Awarded Up to $2.4 million over approximately 11 months, and potentially up to a total award of $12 million --

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., April 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Achaogen, Inc. (NASDAQ:AKAO), a late-stage biopharmaceutical company developing innovative antibacterials addressing multi-drug resistant (MDR) gram-negative infections, today announced that it has entered into an award agreement with CARB-X. Under the agreement, Achaogen will receive an initial award of up to $2.4 million, with the possibility of up to $9.6 million more from CARB-X at its discretion based on the achievement of certain project milestones.

The collaboration will focus on the development of a next-generation broad-spectrum aminoglycoside antibiotic capable of overcoming clinically-relevant resistance mechanisms and potentially treating highly-resistant gram-negative pathogens such as the Enterobacteriaceae family, Acinetobacter baumannii, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. In 2017, the World Health Organization (WHO) recognized multi-drug resistant P. aeruginosa, A. baumannii and various Enterobacteriaceae as “priority 1 critical pathogens” that pose the greatest threat to human health.

“We are honored to have CARB-X’s support in advancing our novel aminoglycoside program, which we believe has significant potential to address the growing multi-drug resistance problem in gram-negative bacteria,” said Lee Swem, Ph.D., Achaogen's Chief Scientific Officer. “The race to develop innovative antibiotics is an ongoing fight against bacterial evolution, which continuously evolve to develop resistance to current therapies. We believe that CARB-X’s financial support is vital to advancing research programs, like ours, that have the potential to impact the lives of patients with serious bacterial infections.”

“Achaogen’s research reflects important advances in the battle to overcome drug-resistance mechanisms. The world urgently needs new antibiotics, rapid diagnostics, vaccines and entirely new approaches to protect us from drug-resistant bacteria,” said Kevin Outterson, Executive Director of CARB-X. “The projects in the Powered by CARB-X portfolio are in the early stages of research, but if successful, these innovative projects hold great potential to treat serious infections and fight against the rise of drug-resistant bacteria.”

About Achaogen’s Novel Aminoglycoside Program
Aminoglycosides have been cornerstone antibiotics for over 70 years but face growing resistance. Achaogen has focused on engineering aminoglycosides to overcome contemporary resistance mechanisms. With CARB-X support, Achaogen will pursue a next-generation aminoglycoside with the aim of overcoming clinically-relevant resistance mechanisms and potentially enabling treatment of a broad spectrum of pathogens including Enterobacteriaceae, P. aeruginosa and A. baumannii, for which there are few new agents in development.

About Achaogen
Achaogen is a late-stage biopharmaceutical company passionately committed to the discovery, development, and commercialization of innovative antibacterial treatments for MDR gram-negative infections. Achaogen is developing plazomicin, its lead product candidate, for the treatment of serious bacterial infections due to MDR Enterobacteriaceae, including carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae. The Food and Drug Administration has granted plazomicin Breakthrough Therapy designation for the treatment of bloodstream infections caused by certain Enterobacteriaceae in patients who have limited or no alternative treatment options. The Company's second product candidate is C-Scape, an orally-administered beta-lactam/beta-lactamase inhibitor combination. Achaogen's plazomicin program has been funded, and its C-Scape program is funded, in part with federal funds from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA). Achaogen has other programs in early and late preclinical stages of development focused on other MDR gram-negative infections and additional disease areas. All product candidates, including plazomicin, are investigational only and have not been approved for commercialization. For more information about Achaogen, please visit www.achaogen.com.

About CARB-X
CARB-X is the world's largest public-private partnership devoted solely to accelerating early development antibacterial R&D. Funded by ASPR/BARDA and Wellcome Trust, with in-kind support from NIAID, CARB-X is investing up to $455 million from 2016-2021 to support innovative antibiotics and other therapeutics, vaccines, rapid diagnostics and devices to treat drug-resistant bacterial infections. CARB-X focuses on high priority drug-resistant bacteria, especially Gram-negatives. CARB-X operates through Boston University. Other partners include RTI International, the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, MassBio, and the California Life Sciences Institute (CLSI). http://www.carb-x.org/.

Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements. All statements other than statements of historical facts contained herein are forward-looking statements reflecting the current beliefs and expectations of management made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including, but not limited to, Achaogen's expectations regarding potential regulatory approval of plazomicin and other product candidates, Achaogen's commercial objectives and Achaogen's pipeline of product candidates. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors that may cause Achaogen's actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, among others, the risks and uncertainties of the regulatory approval process. For a further description of the risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from those expressed in these forward-looking statements, as well as risks relating to Achaogen's business in general, see Achaogen's current and future reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its Annual Report on Form 10-K filed on February 27, 2018. Achaogen does not plan to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements contained in this press release, whether as a result of any new information, future events, changed circumstances or otherwise.

Source: Achaogen, Inc.