Trius awarded new DTRA contract for developing novel antibiotics against gram-negative bacterial pathogens

Trius Therapeutics, Inc. today announced that it has been awarded a new four and a half year contract from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), an agency within the U.S. Department of Defense, for the development of novel antibiotics directed against gram-negative bacterial pathogens. Trius may receive up to $29.5 million in support of development efforts under the new DTRA contract, which is funded as part of DTRA's Transformational Medical Technologies Initiative (TMTI).  Pursuant to the contract, Trius will apply its proprietary Focused Antisense Screening Technology (FAST) discovery platform to identify the targets of antibacterial compounds from marine natural product libraries developed in the laboratory of Dr. William Fenical, Distinguished Professor of Oceanography at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.  Trius will then apply its structure-based drug design and development capabilities in an effort to optimize promising antibacterial compounds for activity against gram-negative biodefense pathogens such as Yersinia pestis, Francisella tularensis and Burkholderia pseudomallei. Trius believes that these compounds will also be active against gram-negative pathogens involved in common hospital acquired infections.

This is the second government-funded research contract that has been awarded to Trius.  In September of 2008, Trius entered into a five-year contract with the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Disease (NIAID), a component of the National Institutes of Health, under which Trius may receive up to $27.7 million.