MicuRx Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a privately held company based in Union City, CA
and Shanghai, named MRX-I as the company’s first preclinical development
candidate. MicuRX is developing next-generation antibiotics aimed at multi-drug
resistant gram-positive bacteria, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus
aureus (MRSA). MRX-I is “a promising antibacterial compound that we expect to be
superior to many of the top-selling antibiotics available today," according to
Zhengyu Yuan, Ph.D., president and chief executive officer of MicuRx
Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
At the same time, the company moved into a new
10,000 square foot laboratory in ZhangJian HighTech Park in Shanghai. The
company said the expanded facility will increase the capacity of MicuRx in
antibacterial drug discovery and development.
The company has research
and development facilities in both the San Francisco Bay Area and the ZhangJiang
High-Tech Park. The two-country focus is important to MicuRx. At the 2007
ChinaBio® Investor Conference, held in Shanghai, MicuRx disclosed that its
business plan was “to capitalize on the global opportunities emerging through
the combination of biotech pharma innovation in the USA and the enterprise
friendly infrastructure and scientific resources of China. This approach affords
MicuRx with utmost efficiency in the drug discovery and development process.”
To develop new antibacterial and antifungal compounds, MicuRx applies
“designer modifications” to validated antibiotics. The goal of the alterations
is to overcome antibiotic resistance, increase the antibacterial spectrum,
improve the dosing regimen, or reduce adverse side effects. MicuRx characterizes
its approach as “de-risked.” In its short life, the company has developed a
pipeline with multiple antifungal and antibiotic drug candidates. With regard to
MRX-I, MicuRx has not disclosed which antibiotic it modified to design a
new-generation compound.
The two milestones – naming its first
preclinical candidate and moving into a larger laboratory – occurred just 12
months after MicuRx closed its $10 million Series A funding in June 2007.
Morningside Group was the sole investor in the round.
The two founders
of MicuRx, Dr. Yuan and Dr. Mike Gordeev, executive vice-president and chief
scientific officer, are veterans of Vicuron Pharmaceuticals, an antibiotics
company that was sold to Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) for $1.9 million in 2005.
Dr. Yuan was the founding scientist of Vicuron Pharmaceuticals and
before that, he worked at Syntex, Affymax, and GlaxoWellcome. He received a
Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Cornell University and his B.S. degree in Chemistry
from Fudan University.
Dr. Gordeev was Vice President of Chemistry of
Vicuron. Previously, he led groups of scientists at GlaxoWellcome and Affymax
that applied combinatorial chemistry in multiple medicinal chemistry programs.
He received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Organic Chemistry from the Moscow
State University (Moscow, Russia).
