Blacksmith and Zoetis will collaborate to discover and develop novel antibiotics to selectively target bacteria for animal health.
Blacksmith Medicines, Inc. (Blacksmith), a leading biopharma dedicated to discovering and developing medicines targeting metalloenzymes, and Zoetis, the world’s leading animal health company, announced a collaboration to discover and develop novel antibiotics for animal health.
“According to authorities including the FDA, CDC, WHO, WOAH, and EMA, antibiotic resistance can spread between animals and humans, and this is particularly devastating for antibiotics that are the last line of treatment for critical infections in people. Blacksmith and Zoetis will collaborate to discover and develop novel antibiotics to selectively target bacteria for animal health,” said Zachary Zimmerman, Ph.D., CEO and co-founder of Blacksmith. “This new collaboration is another example of Blacksmith’s creative deal-making with top tier partners that bring expertise to the table which helps de-risk and accelerate scientific discoveries for the development of valuable products.”
“As part of our commitment to reduce the dependency on antibiotic classes shared with human health, we are pleased to leverage our veterinary expertise along with our extensive collection of pathogens in this collaboration with Blacksmith,” said Dr Jeff Watts, Research Director, External Innovation at Zoetis. “Through our research, we aim to ultimately provide new options for our customers to treat life-threatening infections in livestock.”
About metalloenzymes and the Blacksmith platform
Metalloenzymes utilize a metal ion cofactor in the enzyme active site to perform essential biological functions. This diverse class of targets has historically been difficult to drug due to small molecule chemistry limitations that have plagued the industry. The Blacksmith metalloenzyme platform has solved this problem by leveraging the following:
- A large proprietary fragment library of metal-binding pharmacophores (MBPs);
- A comprehensive database containing a full characterization of the metalloenzyme genome including functions, metal cofactors, and associations to disease;
- A first-of-its-kind metallo-CRISPR library of custom single guide RNAs;
- An industry-leading metalloenzyme computational toolkit for docking, modeling and structure-based drug design; and
- A robust and blocking intellectual property estate covering bioinorganic, medicinal, and computational chemistry approaches for metalloenzyme-targeted medicines.
