GAITHERSBURG, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Adaptive Phage Therapeutics, Inc. (“APT”), a clinical-stage biotechnology company advancing a phage bank, the world’s largest therapeutic phage initiative for treatment of bacterial infectious diseases, today announced the appointment of Edward Fang, M.D. as Chief Medical Officer. Dr. Fang’s responsibilities include overseeing clinical development for APT’s phage bank treatment candidates through commercialization.

“I am excited to welcome Dr. Fang, who brings broad expertise in therapeutic approaches to bacterial infectious disease and clinical trial execution to APT,” stated Greg Merril, CEO and Co-Founder of Adaptive Phage Therapeutics. “With Dr. Fang’s addition to APT’s leadership, I am confident that APT will achieve its short-term objective of rapidly progressing ongoing clinical trials, and longer-term objectives of leveraging expanding phage banks to deliver the first antimicrobials that adapt to the emergence of resistance. This approach does not decrease in coverage over time and will not require, or benefit from, market-suppressing stewardship.”

“I am thrilled to join Adaptive Phage Therapeutics in their battle to solve one of the greatest health challenges of our time – multidrug-resistant bacterial infections – a challenge that has only grown in difficulty with the consistent decline in antibiotic effectiveness and paucity in new product development,” commented Edward Fang, M.D., Chief Medical Officer. “I am excited to join the APT leadership group working tirelessly to build out APT’s phage bank through clinical development to commercialization.”

Prior to joining APT, Dr. Fang served as a Chief Medical Officer of MicuRx Pharmaceuticals, a biotech focused on treating antimicrobial resistance for infectious diseases, and as Chief Medical Officer of Adenium Biotech, a Danish spinoff from Novozymes focused on discovery and development of novel antibiotics for treatment of multidrug-resistant bacterial infections. Dr. Fang previously served in clinical development management roles at Trius Therapeutics and Cerexa and was a practicing physician at One Medical Group and Kaiser Permanente Medical Group.

Dr. Fang earned his M.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine before completing his residency at the same institution. He received a B.A. from Stanford University.

About Adaptive Phage Therapeutics, Inc.

Adaptive Phage Therapeutics (APT) is a clinical-stage company advancing therapies to treat multidrug-resistant infections based on a phage bank concept originally initiated at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) by APT co-founder Carl R. Merril, MD, CAPT USPHS (ret). APT phage bank, the largest in the world, is being steadily expanded with new phage discoveries and collections from a variety of sources, including the biodefense labs of US Department of Defense, internal phage discovery initiatives at APT, and academic phage research labs collaborators around the world.

APT is the sponsor to ongoing clinical trials in Prosthetic Joint Infection (PJI) and Diabetic Foot Osteomyelitis (DFO), addressing notable unmet patient need in those bacterial infection indications. APT’s phage bank has also been used in over 50 compassionate cases under FDA emergency Investigational New Drug allowance in which standard-of-care antibiotics had failed.

APT phage bank is paired with a phage susceptibility test (PST) that matches each patient bacterial isolate to specific lytic phage within APT’s collection – analogous to an antibiotic susceptibility test for matching antibiotics. The APT PST will be commercialized worldwide in collaboration with Mayo Clinic Laboratories.

APT’s clinical development program has attracted substantial financial support from The Defense Health Agency (DHA), NIAID/NIH, The Mayo Clinic, the AMR Action Fund, Deerfield Management, and other VC funds and healthcare systems.

For more information, visit http://www.aphage.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20221025005048/en/