Bull’s-Eye on Bacteria

A new chemical compound developed jointly by the University of New Mexico and the University of Florida may soon help hospitals, industry and everyday consumers “Kill Bacteria Dead.”

Albuquerque company Oligocide Inc. signed a license agreement in June with the Science and Technology Corp., UNM’s technology transfer office, to market the product. It received $175,000 in seed funding from Angel investors in July as part of a $350,000 venture capital round the company expects to close in early fall.

Tom Brennan of Arch Venture Partners, who helped launch the company last year, said he is working on a multimillion-dollar round of funding with venture investors that could include Arch Ventures, Dow Venture Capital and BASF The Chemical Co. Brennan said Oligocide is attracting broad interest from major industry players.

“I’ve never participated in something with such customer pull,” said Brennan, a career venture capitalist who has worked for years to commercialize technology at New Mexico’s national laboratories. “I can’t name them, but we have four major industrial players who are very interested in the technology. I think we have a real opportunity to build a very solid New Mexico-based company.”

Attracting major interest

In past public statements, company officials have said they were talking with multibillion-dollar industry powerhouses, such as Procter & Gamble Co., Kimberly-Clark Corp., 3M, Reckitt Benckiser and Bemis Health Care.

Oligocide, originally called BVB Solutions LLC when it formed last year, changed its name this spring to better reflect the company’s product, said CEO Chuck Call.

Oligocide uses plastic-like chemical compounds known as oligomers and polymers to trap and kill bacteria. Specifically, the company manipulates the anti-bacterial properties of a class of oligomers and polymers called conjugated polyelectrolytes, or CPEs, Call said.

CPEs have positive electrical charges that make them sticky. That allows Oligocide to attach them to the surface of other materials, such as fabrics, while also attracting and trapping bacteria, viruses and some fungi.

CPEs absorb light, which they use to create a molecule called a singlet oxygen . That molecule is toxic to bacteria, Call said.

The company envisions its compound as a low-cost, non-toxic replacement for triclosan, the primary active ingredient in most antimicrobial products, Brennan said.

Non-toxic alternative

“Triclosan is toxic for people and the environment and it could soon be banned by the Environmental Protection Agency,” he said. “Our compound is very inexpensive to make and it’s non-toxic and non-irritable to the skin.”

David Whitten, a UNM biochemist and associate director of UNM’s Biomedical Engineering Center, said he and a team of post-doctoral graduate assistants tested the compound’s toxicity on human skin.

Whitten developed the Oligocide compound in cooperation with Kirk Schanze, a University of Florida organic polymer chemist, under a $1.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense.

“We’ve done standardized skin tests and found that the compound is not harmful at all towards skin,” Whitten said. “It’s only reactive to bacterial cell membranes, not mammalian cell membranes.”

In addition, lab tests have demonstrated a 99.9999 percent kill rate with bacteria.

“It has a six-log kill rate,” Brennan said. “Most anti-microbial products kill 98 percent of bacteria. With billions of microbes, a lot get left behind, and they reproduce and the problem goes on.”

Range of applications

The company envisions a range of industry and consumer applications, such as incorporating the compound directly into fabrics and textiles to make things like anti-microbial hospital gowns or surgeon’s gloves. It could be mixed directly into plastics to make anti-microbial furnishings and devices, or used in filtration or membrane systems for air and water purification.

“We could use it to disinfect contained spaces, say the cabin of a plane, hospitals, day-care centers or a restaurant,” Brennan said. “We’ve had very strong customer attraction for all those applications.”

Call said potential industrial partners are now analyzing samples of Oligocide’s compound.

“We hope to move those relationships forward into funded collaborative development agreements over the next several months,” Call said.

The company will use its new seed funding to hire three post-doctoral students at UNM who helped Whitten and Schanze develop the compound. The two professors will work as consultants to develop commercial applications.

Oligocide has leased a shared space with four other startup companies at a building on the north Interstate 40 industrial corridor at 4343 Pan American Freeway. It will do laboratory work there, and at UNM’s Biomedical Engineering Center.

Exclusive UNM license

The company, which had an option to license the technology since last year, now has a 20-year exclusive license from UNM, which owns the technology jointly with the University of Florida, said STC President and CEO Lisa Kuuttila. Oligocide will pay royalties to the university after the company begins generating revenue.

“We’re very optimistic about the company,” Kuuttila said. “They have very promising markets because the technology has so many potential applications. There could be huge public benefits if they can use it to prevent disease in hospitals and other places.”