£1 million PACE grant to accelerate precision antibiotics

Glox Therapeutics has secured £1 million in grant funding from Pathways to Antimicrobial Clinical Efficacy (PACE), one of the UK’s largest public-private initiatives targeting early-stage antimicrobial medicines and diagnostic discovery. The funding will help to accelerate the development of Glox Therapeutics’ novel antibiotics targeting drug-resistant pathogenic bacteria, Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae. It will also enable the company to expand its team and foster further collaboration with industry experts. Glox Therapeutics is developing an entirely new class of antimicrobials based on proprietary protein bacteriocin engineering platforms. These potent therapeutics target speciﬁc pathogens, or a closely related group of pathogens, to selectively eradicate drug-resistant bacteria with unprecedented efficacy. Unlike conventional antibiotics, these do not harm the human microbiome, ensuring a more effective treatment strategy with reduced side-effects. The grant has been awarded to further the development of Glox Therapeutics’ narrow-spectrum antibiotics targeted at E coli and K pneumoniae. These frequently multidrug-resistant pathogens are a major cause of serious conditions, such as pneumonia, blood stream infections and recurrent urinary tract infections, and are associated with high levels of antimicrobial resistance (AMR)-related mortality. The initial focus will be on hospital- and ventilator-associated pneumonias. AMR innovators PACE was founded in 2023 by LifeArc, Medicines Discovery Catapult, and Innovate UK with a £30 million programme of funding and support to be deployed over five years. It seeks to fund and support global AMR innovators. Projects in the PACE portfolio receive funding and additional support, including R&D advice and access to a UK network of delivery partners, to drive the projects forward for onward investment and ultimately closer to clinical impact. Dr James Clark, CEO and Co-founder, Glox Therapeutics, said: “AMR poses a significant threat to human health globally and this grant will enable us to expand our team and progress the development of our innovative engineered bacteriocins to help combat two of the most life-threatening pathogens.” Kerry Sharp, Director of Entrepreneurship and Investment, Scottish Enterprise, and Investor, Glox Therapeutics, said: “This latest PACE funding for Glox Therapeutics is a massive boost to the business who are operating in such a critical development area. At Scottish Enterprise, one of our aims is to double the number of scaling businesses, which will lead to more high value jobs supporting the transformation of the Scottish economy. This is why we’re collaborating closely with our partners, like Innovate UK, to make it easier for ambitious high growth businesses in Scotland to access the innovation support needed to grow and scale.”