Benzinga | Sep 30, 2021 09:03AM EDT

Summit Therapeutics Presents Insights Surrounding Novel Mechanism Of Action For Investigational Drug Ridinilazole During IDWeek 2021

Summit Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:SMMT) ("Summit" or the "Company") is today displaying an important ePoster at IDWeek 2021. IDWeek is the joint annual meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA), the HIV Medical Association (HIVMA), the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society (PIDS), and the Society of Infectious Diseases Pharmacists (SIDP). Summit's ePoster provides enhanced details regarding the newly discovered novel mechanism of action of ridinilazole. The ePoster will be available throughout IDWeek 2021, which takes place between September 29 and October 3, 2021.

Ridinilazole is Summit Therapeutics' investigational first-in-class drug that recently completed enrollment of a Phase III clinical trial, Ri-CoDIFy. The primary endpoint of this trial seeks to demonstrate the superiority of ridinilazole in sustained clinical response as compared to vancomycin. Ridinilazole is not currently approved for use by any regulatory authority.

Summit's poster presentation provides demonstrable scientific evidence of ridinilazole's novel mechanism of action which involves binding to the minor groove of Clostridioides difficile bacteria's DNA (the minor groove is a location on the helix of the bacteria's DNA to which a drug can attach or bind). This is believed to be the primary mechanism through which ridinilazole elicits its bactericidal action against C. difficile bacteria. Ridinilazole has a novel mechanism of action and is the first of a new class of antibiotics: this is consistent with the World Health Organization's (WHO) recommendation for developing antibiotics with novel mechanisms of action or that are new classes of drugs, which it considers a key point in overcoming existing bacterial resistance.1

Our updated research, through collaboration with the University of Houston, provides new images from high-resolution confocal microscopy. This technique has allowed intracellular visualization of ridinilazole binding to DNA within C. difficile and confirms this novel mechanism of action. Ridinilazole, if approved, has the potential to be the first antibiotic with a novel mechanism of action approved in over ten years.

The poster is available within the "Scientific Literature & Publications" section of our website: https://www.summittxinc.com/publications/.