bioRxivJClub
An oral protein cocktail therapeutic for C. difficile infection
bioRxiv · · Preprint · Open access
Zhao, Dodds + 47 more
Abstract ↗AI summary
The abstract is read at the publisher; the summary is JClub's.
LMN-201, a spirulina-delivered four-component monoclonal protein cocktail for Clostridioides difficile infection, achieved 100% initial clinical cure (21/21) and 90.5% sustained cure through four weeks (19/21).
- Why it matters: Effective oral biologics for GI infections are hard to scale and engineer, and monoclonal protein therapies often struggle with potency and delivery to intestinal sites.
- What they did: Antibody-like moieties were designed with a synthetic avidity framework to boost in vitro toxin neutralization potency by >200-fold, and a lysin moiety added toxinotype-agnostic antibacterial activity; rodent challenge models and a human GI pharmacokinetic study supported distal-intestine exposure.
- The result: In Part A of a Phase 2 study, seven days of LMN-201 plus standard-of-care antibiotics showed favorable safety/tolerability and interim efficacy consistent with high cure rates, supporting spirulina as a scalable oral biologics platform.
The findingWhy it mattersWhat they didThe result
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- Open access
- 7 cites