Kelvin Cooper, CEO of Lakewood-Amedex Biotherapeutics, has developed a novel class of antimicrobials that operate by disrupting bacterial and fungal cell membranes, rapidly killing the microorganisms. Traditional antimicrobials work by inhibiting bacterial growth, but bacteria have evolved resistance mechanisms against all drug classes, with multidrug-resistant strains becoming increasingly common. The company is focused on treating infected diabetic foot ulcers with a topical gel formulation that locally delivers a high drug concentration while minimizing systemic side effects.

Kelvin explains, "You can go back all the way to the discovery of penicillin a century ago, and there was tremendous excitement around that. And then through the 40s, when they figured out how to deep tank ferment the antibacterials, the beta lactams, as it was then, again, there was no real indication that resistance was going to be that big of a problem."

"What we have done at Lakewood-Amedex Biotherapeutics is we've discovered a completely new class of antimicrobials, and it's probably good to give some context of how most antimicrobials work. Typically, what they do is they will stop the bacteria from dividing and growing, and that prevents the bacteria from causing an infection. Now the bacteria and fungi have figured out ways to mutate around that. So they have a different way of building cell walls, for example. And that has become the big problem. Our class of agents hits a completely different type of mechanism. We believe that what happens, and we have good scientific data to show this, is that this class of agents attacks the membrane of bacteria and fungi. It disrupts the membrane, which allows the contents of whatever microbe it is to spill out, and it immediately kills the bacteria extremely rapidly."

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