DRUG DISCOVERY

bitBiome’s endolysins combat pathogens to address
AMR issues and microbiome-related diseases

Endolysin is a new modality for antimicrobial agent. It has the great features as an antimicrobial agent such as a rapid lysis, a low risk of occurrence of antimicrobial resistance, and efficient biofilm disruption.
We can efficiently discover and engineer endolysins for any target bacteria causing infectious diseases and microbiome-related diseases, utilizing our proprietary endolysin discovery platform based on our massive single cell genome database and high-throughput screening system combined with in silico functional mutation .

Endolysin: Antimicrobial protein

Endolysin is a peptidoglycan hydrolase produced by phage to lyse bacterial cell from inside bacteria as well as even from outside bacteria.
Endolysin genes are preserved in bacterial genomic information as prophage sequences, which is about 300 amino acids consisting of Enzymatically Active Domain and Cell-wall Binding Domain.

Advantage of Endolysin

Endolysin is a “next generation” antimicrobial agent with several advantages over small molecule antibiotics and phage therapy.

Can be scrolled horizontally.

Modality	Small molecule drug	Phage therapy	Endolysin
feature	Traditional medicine	bacteria-specific virus	Protein (enzyme) expressed by phage
Convenience	High (Oral administration, storage at room temperature)	Low （Intravenous Injection, storage under refrigeration）	Low （Intravenous Injection, storage under refrigeration）
Manufacturing cost	Low	High	Middle
Difficulty in manufacturing	Low	High	Middle
Risk of inducing drug-resistant bacteria	High	Middle	Low
Concerns about side effects	High	Low	Low
Spread risk	No	Yes	No

Strategy and Advantage of bitBiome

Our proprietary platform arising from combination of our own massive microbial genome database (MMGDB) and high-throughput screening system enables efficient and rational endolysin discovery. MMGDB can give us the endolysin genes accompanied with an answer who is their host (target) bacterium species. We can exponentially expand endolysin gene libraries by domain shuffling based on bioinformatical predictions of domain structures. Utilizing machine learning, we can strategically optimize the endolysin sequences with appropriate efficacy and stability. Our platform system enables us to obtain hit-compounds within 3-4 months.

bitBiome Pipeline

We intend to develop endolysins for two disease categories: life-threatening infectious diseases including those caused by drug-resistant bacteria and microbiome-related non-infectious diseases with unmet medical needs.