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24 n e w h a v e n B I Z | J a n u a r y / F e b r u a r y 2 0 1 9 n e w h a v e n b i z . c o m M e l i n t a T h e r a p e u t i c s Enhance Your Business Career with an MBA From Southern • Traditional evening program with concentrations in accounting, finance, healthcare administration, international business, management, and marketing • Accelerated weekend program with hybrid format of online and Saturday classes can be completed in 17 months • Faculty with real world business expertise and strong business connections Flexible. Affordable. Professional. For more information, visit SouthernCT.edu/mba Yet companies trying to launch new antibi- otics are struggling, and investor interest in the space is "as bad as it's ever been," says Needham Co. analyst Alan Carr, who specializes in the antibiotics industry. Carr, who lives in North Branford, says it's common for biotechs to put the brakes on R&D when they run into financial distress. "It's how they conserve resources," he says. Last summer, San Francisco-based Achao- gen shed 80 jobs just a month aer winning FDA approval for its new antibiotic plazomicin (Zemdri), which treats complex urinary-tract infections. Like Melinta, the company said it was cutting spending on R&D to focus on commercial activities. McCarthy says winning FDA approval for a drug is "only part of the battle" for an antibi- otics developer. e next hurdle is convincing budget-strapped hospitals to buy the of- ten-costlier new drugs. Since it can cost as much as $1 billion to devel- op an antibiotic and shepherd it through clinical trials, explains McCarthy, companies need to price them high to recoup their investment. Baxdela, for instance, costs around $1,500 for 20 tablets, according to the website drugs.com. "My hospital doesn't even carry that drug and the reason for that is there are IV treat- ments and oral treatments for MRSA that are much cheaper," says McCarthy. "I have drugs at my disposal that cost 40 bucks to treat MRSA." Meanwhile, responding to concerns about antibiotic resistance, hospitals that do purchase new antibiotics tend to save them as last-resort drugs, further diminishing their commercial prospects, he says. "It's a really, really tough market, and until these economic issues get worked out I don't think any of us can be confident that there are going to be drugs to treat resistant bacteria anytime soon," Melinta co-founder Moore explains. Future prospects Key among the programs on the cutting block at Melinta is its ESKAPE pathogen program, which targeted so-called superbugs. (Each letter in ESKAPE stands for bacteria with multi-drug resistance features.) e company's now-defunct R&D team was developing a new class of antibiotics that could kill all six of the ESKAPE superbugs, which cause diseases ranging from pneumonia and urinary-tract infections to intra-abdominal and Continued from previous page Uncertain future: Melinta's 300 George St. facility.

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