Oricula Therapeutics secures initial funding from University of Washington

These represent key steps toward achieving the company’s vision to commercialize compounds it has developed to prevent certain types of hearing loss.

The company’s product will be the first medicine to be FDA-approved to protect the inner ear from the damaging effects of antibiotics that are known to cause permanent hearing loss.

Reducing or eliminating hearing loss as a side effect of antibiotic therapy would allow broader worldwide use of these antibiotics for the treatment of life-threatening bacterial infections, such as multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, endocarditis and neonatal septicemia.

Oricula Therapeutics, founded in January 2013, emerged through hearing research conducted at University of Washington focused on a common form of hearing loss caused by antibiotic therapy. Aminoglycoside antibiotics are known to cause damage or death to the sound-sensing hair cells in the inner ear, resulting in permanent hearing loss in up to 10-20% of patients.

Over the past four years, the scientific team that founded Oricula identified several new chemical entities that are up to 100x more potent than the initial lead compound.

All have drug-like profiles consistent with becoming clinical candidates, based on physiochemical and absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion (ADME) profiles. These compounds are the subjects of ongoing research for eventual commercialization by Oricula Therapeutics.

As the commercialization partner, Oricula Therapeutics continued research with University of Washington into the effectiveness of its compounds in mammals under a grant from Life Sciences Discovery Fund.

In late 2013, the company negotiated exclusive licenses from the University of Washington for the intellectual property, including key patents, related to the research and compounds. The company is currently working on pre-clinical development in for an FDA Initial New Drug filing.