Lixa: Revolutionizing Anti-Infection Treatments and Raising Awareness on Antimicrobial Resistance
Pictured: The Lixa team at the 2022 WA Innovator of the Year Awards with WA Innovation Minister Hon Stephen Dawson MLC and Wesfarmers representative Kylie Ashenbrenner.
Lixa, an emerging biotech startup based in Western Australia, is on a mission to resolve recurring microbial infections and contaminations by developing a novel approach that makes resistant bacteria vulnerable to antibiotics and the immune system again.
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) occurs when microbes such as bacteria and fungi become resistant to the drugs which once killed them - evolving into untreatable ‘superbugs’. The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared AMR one of the top ten global public health threats facing humanity, cautioning it is possible that a “post-antibiotic era” may be coming, where minor infections – currently easily treated with common antibiotics – may become deadly.
One of the key contributors to AMR is biofilms, substances that act as protective barriers around bacteria and make them more resistant. Lixa’s NeoX™ platform, originally developed at The University of Western Australia, is an antibiofilm technology that dissolves biofilms to make bacteria vulnerable again. Notably, this antibiofilm technology has applications not only in human health, but in animals and plants as well.
Collaboration has been a vital component of Lixa's strategy from the start. Founders Dr Maud Eijkenboom and Dr Angela Fonceca, who now serve as Chief Executive Officer and Non-Executive Director of the company respectively, were originally introduced by the WA Life Sciences Innovation Hub’s Director Stakeholder Engagement Dr Tracey Wilkinson, who recognised the synergies between their work and facilitated a connection which led to the creation of Lixa and the foundation of a shared vision to address the looming AMR crisis.
Dr Eijkenboom believes that the mission at the heart of Lixa has been key to building the company’s strong, long-term partnerships.
“When you come with a personal story but engrained in capabilities in the industry – you know where you’re sitting and where it fits – the relationships become very strong,” she said.
Recognising the importance of building a business – not just developing a product – and the value of global relationships in addressing the complex problem of AMR led Lixa to undertake activities not usually driven by biotech start-ups in their launch year.
Notably, Lixa led an Australian AMR Awareness Tour in early 2023 that spanned six cities and included international speakers, Chief Scientific Officer of the Global AMR Accelerator, CARB-X, Dr Richard Alm and AMR advocate, Diane Shader Smith. Events featured screenings of the documentary "Salt in My Soul," which highlighted the experiences of Diane’s daughter Mallory Smith, a cystic fibrosis patient who succumbed to a resistant superbug infection.
To build on the Australian AMR Awareness Tour, the Hub helped facilitate the visit of Dr Alm to Perth, organising a roundtable discussion about the commercialisation of AMR solutions and facilitated one-on-one consultations with local AMR researchers and innovators. The Hub is continuing to support AMR innovators to overcome the significant barriers to commercialisation in this space by coordinating opportunities for ongoing discussions and direct engagement with the Australian Antimicrobial Resistance Network (AAMRNet), a multi-stakeholder expert group established by MTPConnect to promote Australia’s role in the fight against AMR. A visit to Perth by AAMRNet’s Co-Chair and MTPConnect’s Director of Stakeholder Engagement, Queensland, Andrew Bowskill, is planned for the second half of 2023.
Lixa has benefitted from active participation in national networks through the AAMRNet and leveraged opportunities to build connections through international delegations to the international BIO Conference in 2022 and 2023, which were supported by the Hub. In fact, the connection with Diane Shader Smith occurred in San Diego at BIO 2022, after Dr Eijkenboom heard Diane speak at an AMR panel discussion.
In 2022, AAMRNet wrote a letter of support for Dr Fonceca’s application to attend the 2022 International Course on Antibiotics and Resistance (ICARe), which facilitates full immersion in AMR innovation and collaborations between the global AMR community. Andrew Bowskill said that AAMRNet commends Lixa on their commitment to tackling AMR through its novel approach.
“AMR is growing at an alarming rate, and a recent WHO report has stated that AMR is set to cause 5.2 million deaths in our region by 2030. Collaborations such as these contribute to the national effort in rising to this challenge.
“We were pleased that Dr Fonceca could attend the ICARe course last year, which was set up to ensure that the next generation of AMR researchers are well equipped with the skillset required to help develop new solutions to this urgent threat to global health," said Mr Bowskill.
Dr Wilkinson added that “Lixa is a great example of what can be achieved with a multi-disciplinary team who coalesce behind a shared vision and leverage the connected health and medical life sciences ecosystem in Western Australia. The Lixa team have moved fast, in large part because they have combined an innovative approach with commercialisation experience and tapped into the networks and expertise within the sector in a collaborative way.”
Lixa's innovative approach to combating AMR has earned them recognition and early funding success. They were awarded the prestigious Wesfarmers Wellbeing Platinum Award at the 2022 WA Innovator of the Year Awards, highlighting the potential impact of Lixa's technology on saving lives and addressing the global threat of AMR. They were also among the first recipients of the CERI Startup grant, have raised over $3 million in funding, and grown their team to 9FTE, a remarkable rate of growth for the company’s first year.
Often described as a ‘silent pandemic’, AMR killed more people than malaria and HIV globally in 2019. In Australia, over 1,600 deaths were directly attributable to AMR. Lixa is not only producing a product that can revolutionise world health but is also endeavouring to shift the cultural understanding of AMR’s threat to the global community.
As Dr Eijkenboom says, “Everyone’s affected by AMR, they just have no idea.”