Cadila Pharmaceuticals Limited, one of India's largest privately held pharmaceuticals company, and UK-based antibiotics discovery company, Helperby Therapeutics have signed a joint agreement on Antibiotic Drug Resistance Research & Development. Global market size of antibiotics is estimated to be around $69 billion.

Described as the most important innovation in the discovery of new antibiotics since Alexander Fleming's original breakthrough more than 80 years ago, this is a major announcement in the fight against resistance with the discovery of patented 'resistance breaker' compounds. These new compounds are called Antibiotic Resistance Breakers. When an Antibiotic Resistance Breaker is combined with an old obsolete antibiotic, it can rejuvenate it and make it active against highly resistant bacteria. Antibiotic Resistance Breakers can potentially rescue several different classes of antibiotics. Furthermore, this approach requires the development of fewer novel compounds, is less risky and less costly than the traditional "one antibiotic" route.

Elaborating on this tie up, Cadila Pharmaceuticals' Chairman and Managing Director, Dr. Rajiv I Modi said, "The Founder Chairman of our company, Shri IA Modi, believed in providing affordable medicines for the masses through innovative and cutting-edge research & development (R&D). This discovery will open new avenues against resistant organisms and is very timely in view of global concerns about rapidly growing bacterial resistance against current antibiotics. Cadila Pharmaceuticals' collaboration with Helperby can help the mankind win the battle against the microbes and hopefully save millions of lives in coming years."

Helperby signed its first major licensing deal with Indian pharma giant Cadila Pharmaceuticals to take the compound through further clinical trials, approvals and into commercialisation. Helperby will supply Cadila Pharmaceuticals Ltd. with Antibiotic Resistance Breakers whilst Cadila Pharmaceuticals Ltd. will develop the combinations with old antibiotics.

Helperby, a spin-out of the UK's University of London, St George's Hospital has been working for the past 12 years on ways to tackle antibiotic resistance and has discovered a new series of potent, fast-acting drugs which rescue old antibiotics. Instead of targeting multiplying bacteria, the research team focused on non-multiplying, dormant bacteria. Developing antibiotics that specifically target these root-like bacteria has never been done before - in fact conventional methods of screening have consistently missed these promising candidate drugs.