BRIEF — Big showing for Shionogi's 'Trojan horse' drug

Phase II data on cefiderocol (S-649266), a new drug from Japanese pharma company Shionogi for the treatment of urinary tract infection in patients at risk of multidrug-resistant Gram-negative infections, has appeared in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal.

During an infection, one of the innate immune responses is to create an iron-poor environment. The drug acts like the Trojan horse to trick bacteria into allowing it to enter, binding to iron in order to ‘fool’ bacteria into transporting it past their defences and inside their cells.

The trials suggested the drug was as effective as current treatments, imipenem-cilastatin.

With bacteria increasingly becoming resistant to antibiotics, this study has been hailed as a rare development in the field and its results will provide the basis for submission of a New Drug Application to the US Food and Drug Administration.