CosmosID® Enters Microbiome Partnership with Locus Biosciences

CosmosID®, an American provider of end-to-end microbiome platforms and award-winning metagenomics services, announced entering into a microbiome partnership with a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing a new class of precision-engineered bacteriophage treatments, Locus Biosciences, Inc.  With this partnership, CosmosID focuses on providing its GCP-compliant and CLIA-certified laboratory services for Locus' clinical trial initiatives in the microbiome field.

Locus is developing two innovative biotherapeutics categories to meet significant unaddressed medical needs. First, engineered bacteriophage therapies that use bacteria resident in specific body locations to dispatch therapeutic molecules. Second, precision CRISPR-enhanced bacteriophage (crPhage®) products to combat fatal infections, including the ones caused by multi-drug resistant bacteria.

Locus is able to swiftly recognize, distinguish, engineer, and produce bacteriophage products against bacterial targets involved in the pathogenesis of numerous diseases by collaborating discovery automation, industry-leading informatics, synthetic biology, and sophisticated in-house manufacturing.

CosmosID's infrastructure for providing access to compliant, higher resolution, and robust microbiome analysis will allow Locus to enhance its capability and add insight into precision therapeutics platforms. With its shotgun metagenomics, the company will assist Locus in understanding its products' effectiveness through CosmosID's robust resolution microbiome analysis, commencing with its urinary tract infection clinical program.

We're thrilled to partner with Locus on its groundbreaking clinical pipeline as we help the company better understand the impact of these phages on the microbiome, Locus' robust and diligent approach to this study is much needed in the field and we look forward to helping them build a strong clinical data package."

This partnership with CosmosID will allow Locus to monitor microbiome changes upon treatment of patients with antibiotics and with crPhage, helping us to evaluate the impact of preserving and protecting their microflora while clearing their infections."