Azitra, Inc. announced preclinical data from the company?s platform and pipeline. The data will be presented on May 10, 2024, in two oral sessions entitled Engineered Staphylococcus Epidermidis as a Protein Delivery System for Treating Skin Diseases and Staphylococcus epidermidis Strain Expressing LEKTI-D6 (ATR12-351) for Netherton Syndrome. ATR-12 is an engineered strain of S. epidermidis that expresses a fragment of human lympho-epithelial Kazal-type-related inhibitor (LEKTI) protein, which is missing in patients with Netherton syndrome, a chronic and sometimes fatal disease of the skin estimated to affect approximately one to nine in every 100,000.

ATR-12 has been engineered to deliver missing LEKTI protein when applied topically to Netherton syndrome patients. Azitra has an open IND for a Phase 1b clinical trial in adult patients (NCT06137157). The data in the abstracts released online show that topical application of ATR-12 in preclinical models reduced produced reduced IL-36 by 93% compared to skin extracts induced to overexpress IL-36.

Additionally, topical application of ATR-12 significantly reduced protease activity in skin samples compared to a Netherton syndrome model skin (p<0.01). Finally, ATR-12 produced higher amounts of LEKTI compared to topical application of LEKTI protein alone (6.0 µg vs. 2.3 µg, respectively, p<0.01) after 24 hours and resulted in deeper skin penetration of LEKTI.