The new company, called Aurobac Therapeutics, will be headquartered in Lyon, France. Boehringer Ingelheim is the lead investor with €30 million, with Evotec and BioMérieux each investing €5 million. The partners did not disclose the size of their stakes in the venture.

“The rise of antibiotic-resistant infections — also called antimicrobial resistance, or AMR — is indeed a looming global crisis,” added Michel Pairet, head of Boehringer Ingelheim’s Innovation unit and member of the board of managing directors. “Antibiotic resistance kills about 1.27 million people globally every year and it has been estimated that by 2050, as many as 10 million worldwide deaths could result from AMR, making it potentially deadlier than cancer.”

The partners said current antibiotic treatment regimens lean heavily on broad-spectrum and unfocused medicines. Aurobac’s goal is to change this to a precision-led approach, using new highly effective and targeted therapies, combined with rapid diagnostics to quickly identify pathogens and their resistance patterns.

Author: Elaine Burridge, Freelance Journalist