Synereca Pharmaceuticals

Synereca Pharmaceuticals, Inc. operated as a research-stage biopharmaceutical company, having been founded in 2009. The firm was established to confront the escalating issue of bacterial resistance to existing antibiotics. One of its co-founders, W. Bennett Love, who also served as Vice President, brought over two decades of experience in financial, strategic, and senior management roles within the biotech sector. His background includes involvement in the development, funding, and collaborations of multiple biotech firms.

The company's core business was the development of novel, orally active drugs designed to restore and enhance the effectiveness of current antibiotics. Synereca focused on creating compounds that could potentiate major antibiotic classes such as polymyxins, carbapenems, aminoglycosides, and fluoroquinolones. Its target clients were drug manufacturing companies, aiming to provide them with effective medications for bacterial infections. The company's business model was rooted in a venture capital-backed structure, having received multiple rounds of funding, including a debt financing round in 2010 and several VC rounds through 2017. The firm was a portfolio company of Accele Biopharma, an Oklahoma City-based biotechnology accelerator.

Synereca's product development pipeline featured two primary research programs. The first program centered on compounds that boost the effectiveness of Colistin, an antibiotic often used as a last resort for multidrug-resistant Gram-negative bacteria, without increasing its toxicity. Preclinical results demonstrated that combining Synereca's compounds with existing antibiotics could restore and enhance their activity against highly resistant pathogens. A second program focused on inhibiting RecA, a crucial enzyme involved in bacterial DNA repair and the spread of antibiotic resistance. This work was based on technology licensed from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Despite its efforts and securing approximately $2.5 million in funding by mid-2015, the company is now listed as out of business.

Keywords: antibiotic resistance, biopharmaceutical, drug discovery, antibiotic potentiators, Gram-Negative bacteria, Colistin, RecA inhibitors, bacterial infections, multidrug resistant bacteria, preclinical models, venture capital-backed, Accele Biopharma, life sciences, drug development, antimicrobial resistance, infectious diseases, pharmaceutical research, DNA repair, bacterial resistance, novel compounds