Presentations of Cempra Pharmaceutical's CEM-102 (fusidic acid) at the Infectious Diseases Society of America Annual Meeting Highlight Properties That Make It an Excellent Anti-MRSA...( CHAPEL HILL N.C. Oct. 29 /- Cempra Ph...),Health

CHAPEL HILL, N.C., Oct. 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Cempra Pharmaceuticals today announced data presentations of its lead antibiotic candidate, CEM-102 (fusidic acid), at the Infectious Diseases Society of America, 47th Annual Meeting, Oct. 29 to Nov. 1, 2009, in Philadelphia.

Fusidic acid is a compound with an established record of treating staphylococcal infections, including methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA), outside the U.S., a unique mechanism of action and low levels of bacterial resistance. CEM-102, a new oral formulation of fusidic acid and with a PK-PD-based dosing regimen, is being investigated for the treatment of acute bacterial skin structure infections in a Phase 2/3 clinical trial vs. linezolid. This adaptive-design trial is expected to transition into a Phase 3 pivotal trial in the first quarter of 2010.

Three posters to be presented at IDSA on October 30 (12:30 to 2 p.m. EDT) confirm CEM-102's potency against contemporary isolates of S. aureus, including MRSA, from the U.S. and Canada, with MIC90s in the 0.25 micrograms/ml range (Posters 202, 203, 261). Isolates resistant to other antibiotics were susceptible to CEM-102, indicating little cross resistance to CEM-102. Importantly, resistance to CEM-102 increased only slightly and remained low (less than 10% of isolates), in Canadian strains isolated between 2001 and 2008 despite fusidic acid being available in Canada since 1987 (Poster 202). Mutational frequency of two strains of MRSA following a single exposure to CEM-102 was shown to be low providing further evidence of the low likelihood for the development of bacterial resistance (Poster 203). The robustness of the results from these studies was confirmed by an analysis of bacterial susceptibility to CEM-102 using three different susceptibility testing methods (Poster 261). The prior studies employed broth microdilution. In this study, broth microdilution, disk diffusion and Etest methods showed h
'/>"/>