Sen. Murphy Names New Haven Company As Innovator Of the Month

CT State Senate: U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) announced on Friday that Melinta Therapeutics – a New Haven-based pharmaceutical company that discovers, develops and brings to market novel antibiotics to treat serious bacterial infections – is “Murphy’s Innovator of the Month.” Melinta Therapeutics was originally founded as a drug discovery company in 2000 by Yale University professors. Now, the company is the pharmaceutical industry’s largest dedicated antibiotics company, employing approximately 350 people and marketing a full suite of products for serious infections, while also developing entirely new classes of antibiotics that target the most serious types of infections that are prone to resistance. During the last few years, Murphy visited Melinta and Melinta executives have participated in Murphy’s roundtable discussions on federal health research funding.

Over the last year, Melinta has seen significant growth, particularly with its work to develop antibiotics that are addressing antibiotic resistance, including new classes of antibiotics for bacterial “superbugs.” According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, each year, at least 2 million people in the United States are infected with bacteria resistant to antibiotics and at least 23,000 people die as a direct result of these infections. In addition, studies estimate that antibiotic resistance in the United States costs $20 billion in excess healthcare costs, including from costlier treatments and extended hospital stays, with additional costs for lost productivity estimated to be as high as $35 billion a year.

“Melinta Therapeutics is working to save lives every single day. Founded by Yale professors, Melinta is taking on the incredibly important challenge of discovering and developing new antibiotics that address the issue of resistance. It’s great to see how much the company has grown and accomplished since my visit a few years ago, and I look forward to continuing to support them,” said Murphy.

“Because bacteria continue to find ways to render current antibiotics ineffective, there is a profound unmet need for new antibiotics that will continue to expand over the next decade without more focus from industry, government, health professionals and others,” said Erin Duffy, Chief Scientific Officer of Melinta. “We are appreciative of and applaud Senator Murphy’s recognition of this important global health threat and value his support as we continue our work to provide patients and healthcare providers with a range of solutions that can help meet the continually evolving threat of bacterial infections.”

Murphy believes entrepreneurship and innovation are building blocks for a strong economy. In the U.S. Senate, he has introduced two bipartisan pieces of legislation to incentivize angel investors to put more money into startup companies – the Angel Tax Credit Act and the Helping Angels Lead Our Startups (HALOS) Act. Startup companies create an average of 2 million jobs each year.

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