Arsanis

Severe infectious diseases have emerged as a major global healthcare problem, in particular, hospital associated infections such as pneumonia and bloodstream infectious. These infections are associated with unacceptably high morbidity and mortality rates (up to 30%) due to the increasingly ineffective antibiotic therapies available. Global healthcare costs associated with these infections are escalating, currently estimated at $5B annually.

Antibiotics and vaccines have failed to address this ever growing medical need. Antibiotics are becoming ineffective due to emerging drug resistance amongst a range of bacterial pathogens, and often fail in the increasing population of immuno-compromised individuals as they do not support immune defense or prevent damaging inflammatory responses. The few novel antibiotics in development are expected to only delay the problem of drug resistance due to the ability of bacteria to evolve novel resistance mechanisms upon introduction of new drugs. Vaccination has contributed to improvements in the prophylaxis of some community acquired infectious diseases, but not in hospitalized individuals where vaccination would only be effective prior to hospital admission as both an intact immune system and adequate time to develop protective immunity is required.

Arsanis is addressing this problem by developing new prophylactic and therapeutic drugs based on fully human monoclonal antibodies (mAbs). mAbs can act immediately and require only (if at all) basic non-adaptive immune functions (e.g., complement, phagocytes) that are often retained even in immune compromised individuals.