LYNNTECH INC. — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: CBD192-004

Description

The threat of the use of biological weapons against U.S. military forces and civilians may be more acute than at any time in the U.S. history. Bacterial pathogens Burkholderia mallei, Burkholderia pseudomallei, and Brucella app. are Category B bio-threat agents. Drug resistance has been seen to nearly all antibiotics that have been developed. More effective therapeutics and alternate therapies are urgently needed to treat disease caused by bio-threat bacteria. Lynntech proposes the creation of a large, genetically engineered lytic phage library containing a wide spectrum of variants with the capability of recognizing a broad range of hosts. Screening such a library will allow rapid isolation of recombinant phages capable of infecting and destroying host bacterial species far from the original host. The key innovation of Lynntech’s proposed approach is that the constructed phage library can be used to identify phage candidates for a wide range of bacterial pathogens. Moreover, Lynntech’s proposed technology can be extended to engineer a wide range of virulent phages.