Valigen Therapeutics is developing a first-in-class drug that targets E. coli in human urine, where it causes uncomplicated urinary tract infections, while sparing the gut and vaginal flora.
Drug-resistant infections threaten to kill 10 million people a year by 2050. For uncomplicated bladder infections, the standard of care also disrupts the gut and vaginal flora that keep us healthy.
Up to half of young females experience a recurrent E. coli bladder infection within a single year of treatment.
Broad-spectrum antibiotics disrupt protective gut and vaginal flora, leaving patients more vulnerable to infection recurring.
Repeated, untargeted treatment drives antimicrobial resistance, and the clinic still has no microbiome-friendly option.
Our drug exploits a metabolic vulnerability that E. coli needs to survive in human urine. Shut it down and the bacteria starve, while the rest of the microbiome is left untouched.
Activity is focused on the bladder environment, where uncomplicated UTIs take hold.
A narrow mechanism preserves the protective microbiome that broad antibiotics destroy.
We target a gene which encodes an enzyme E. coli requires to grow specifically when in human urine.
We chose to target ALS II (acetolactate synthase II, encoded by the ilvG gene), which has been reported as required for E. coli survival specifically in human urine and has no analog in humans. We then ran a computational pipeline to find first-in-class inhibitors against it.
A urine-essential enzyme with no approved antibacterial inhibitor. Validated as a metabolic vulnerability of uropathogenic E. coli by an independent 2025 genome-scale study.
Lead validated over 600 ns of molecular-dynamics simulation; likely to concentrate in urine.
A representative acetohydroxyacid synthase (AHAS / ALS) active site. The translucent surface is the binding pocket; our candidate inhibitor sits inside it as an abstract volume, next to the ThDP cofactor. Drag to rotate · scroll to zoom.
Structure shown is a public homolog (RCSB PDB 1N0H), not Valigen's predicted model. The lead compound is not disclosed.
Our path runs from a validated target to early pre-clinical studies, doing the computational work first to keep costs down.
The global UTI market is projected to grow from $10.2B in 2025 to $16.6B by 2032. Females account for an estimated 75% of UTI testing, and there are zero clinical-stage microbiome-friendly competitors.
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