Posted by Michael Wonder on 02 Aug 2016
Breakthrough drugs don't always break through
2 August 2016 - Seres Therapeutics is the kind of company that excites biotech investors -- and occasionally burns them.
It's a pioneer in developing drugs that focus on the microbiome, on modifying the millions of organisms living in your guts. It's a red-hot research area, being studied in relation to everything from infections to cancer.After promising early results for its lead drug,
Seres received an FDA breakthrough therapy designation. That status is reserved for medicines that treat life-threatening conditions and show potential to be better than existing therapies. The designation means a possibly faster approval process.
Seres aimed to treat C. difficile infections with a pill containing good bacteria that attempted to re-balance patients' gut microbiomes. It would potentially supplant effective but (understandably) less-appealing fecal transplants.
