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September 3, 2019 Bioscience Notebook

Melinta’s Duffy lands key role at Boston accelerator

PHOTO | John Stearns Erin Duffy
By Natalie Missakian

Erin Duffy, longtime head of Melinta Therapeutics’ shuttered New Haven R&D team, will continue her fight against the growing threat of superbugs in a new job.

Boston University-based CARB-X (short for Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator) announced Tuesday morning that it had hired Duffy as its new chief of research and development. 

Funded in part by the federal government, the three-year-old accelerator awards grants to companies developing new antibiotics to combat drug-resistant bacteria.

Despite the pressing need, large pharmaceutical companies and investors have largely turned away from antibiotics development in favor of other drugs with higher profit margins and nearer-term commercialization prospects.

“The world urgently needs new products to address the spread of drug-resistant bacteria, which kills an estimated 700,000 people around the world each year,” said Duffy in a statement. “I welcome this challenge to help CARB-X select and support the development of new products that have the potential to save lives and deliver solutions to this global health crisis.” 

Duffy joined Melinta in 2002 shortly after its founding and became chief scientific officer in 2011. She departed in March after the biotech shelved its discovery research program and closed its flagship Elm City office in a cost-cutting move.

She had been leading the biotech’s ESKAPE pathogen program, which aimed to develop a single antibiotic that would kill all six of the deadliest drug-resistant bacteria, commonly known as superbugs. 

In her new role she will oversee CARB-X’s global portfolio of antibiotics, diagnostics, vaccines and products that address antibacterial resistance, which includes 30 active projects in five countries.

Duffy’s work will include selecting which new projects to fund, as well as managing support teams assigned to CARB-X-backed companies, according to a spokeswoman.

The non-profit invests in companies whose research targets the deadliest bugs. It is particularly concerned about Gram-negative bacteria, such as E.coli, which are resistant to multiple drugs and cause most hospital-acquired infections.

The organization plans to invest more than $500 million in antibacterial R&D by 2021. 

CARB-X Executive Director Kevin Outterson said as the organization has grown, it needed additional scientific depth on its senior leadership team. 

“We thought it would be an outstanding addition to have somebody that not only has the scientific chops to be head of R&D for us, but also has experience working for the kind of small antibiotics companies that CARB-X serves,” he said in a phone interview.

Duffy, who will also sit on CARB-X’s governing board, replaces Karen Gallant, who was promoted to deputy executive director. 

Outterson said Duffy spent her first day of work Tuesday at the 2019 ASM/ESCMID Conference on Drug Development in Boston, sponsored by the American Society for Microbiology and the European Society for Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases.

“We have 450 of the world’s antibiotic researchers here in Boston working together and trying to develop new drugs, so it’s a great way to start,” he said. 

Contact Natalie Missakian at news@newhavenbiz.com

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