ACX is the only company that has successfully reproduced the compounds that bacteria use to kill microbes for therapeutic development. Our patentable technology, which comprises synthetic compounds that mimic natural substances, has applications in humans, animals, and crops. We are beginning with the elimination of crop pathogens—harmful to pests but beneficial for humans!
Therapeutics inspired by bacteria's natural killing abilities
Title: ACX: Therapeutics inspired by bacteria's natural killing abilities | Y Combinator

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### Therapeutics inspired by bacteria's natural killing abilities

ACX is the only company that has successfully recreated synthetically the compounds that bacteria use to kill microbes for therapeutic development. Our patentable technology has applications in humans, animals, and crops. We are beginning with the elimination of crop pathogens—harmful to pests but beneficial for humans!



ACX

Founded:2024

Team Size:2

Location:San Francisco

### Active Founders

### Emmanouela Petsolari, Founder

Emmanouela is the Co-Founder & CEO of ACX and PhD in Biochemistry and Biophysics from the University of Cambridge. Previously, she held several research positions working in immunology, cancer, malaria vaccine development and viral drug discovery (in institutes like Barts Cancer Institute CRUK, Cambridge University, King’s College London, Institute Curie France and Imperial College London).



### Melina Petsolari, Founder

Melina is the Co-founder & CTO of ACX and PhD in Computer Science from King's College London. Previously, she held several research positions spanning digital health, robotics, technology-enable interventions, HCAI and NLP (in institutes like Cambridge University, King’s College London, National Health Service (NHS) in England and Francis Crick Institute).



### Company Launches

[### 🧬🦠 ACX – Therapeutics inspired by bacteria's natural killing abilities](

Hi everyone,

We are [**ACX**]( We’re two PhD’s in Biochemistry/Biophysics and Computer Science from the University of Cambridge and King’s College London developing a new type of therapy with applications in everything from cancer to agriculture. We have discovered a new molecular weapon that naturally occurs in bacteria to eliminate bad microbes with high specificity. We are harnessing this natural killing mechanism to first provide more efficacious pest control measures.

### **Team:**

👩🏼‍🔬[**Emmanouela Petsolari**]( – Molecular Geneticist and Biochemist with 8 years of research experience in drug discovery and development (from leukemia, ovarian, and breast cancer as well as viral and bacterial infections).

👩🏼‍🔬 [**Melina Petsolari**](  – Computer Scientist and Designer with extensive experience in HCI, AI, and healthcare developing hardware and software for applications in digital health, biotech, and privacy.



**❌ Problem:**
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### **_In humans_**

Despite billions of dollars being spent each year on cancer therapeutics and cancer research, more than 10 million patients still die every year from the disease.

1.  ~90% of cancer-related deaths in patients receiving chemotherapy are caused due to ineffective treatments that have off-target effects
    
    ●  Cancer relapse and metastasis formation further lead to less than five-year survival rates
    
    ●  Current treatments cause high toxicity and adverse side effects due to a lack of on-target specificity, which further causes disruption of healthy cells
    

### **_In animal farming and agriculture_**

There is more disease impacting our livestock and crops than ever before - and this comes at a time when the human population is also exploding.

1.  Manure from livestock and extensive use of limited therapeutics for growth promotion and disease prevention in animal breeding as well as overuse of pesticides in crops
    
    ●  One billion kilos of chemicals are used annually to combat crop pests
    
2.  Spread of pathogenic agents that have adapted in previously used medications
    
3.  Failure of commonly used pesticides and insecticides has been documented in nearly 1000 distinct pest species worldwide
    
    ●  This leads each year to the world’s food supply facing an up to 30% loss due to insect pests alone, and this number is continuously increasing
    

✅ **Our Solution:**
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What do these three areas have in common? Existing therapeutics are either no longer effective or have never worked to the extent necessary for achieving positive outcomes. We have discovered a common biological pathway that can be targeted from the human level down to the animal level and even to the crop level to develop robust therapeutics capable of overcoming pathogen and cancer evolution.

### ✅ ✅ **Specifics:**

ACX is the only company that has been able to reproduce the mechanism that bacteria use to kill microbes for therapeutics, and we are starting by eliminating crop pathogens:

1.  We have _in vitro_ validation data of our therapeutic showing high inhibition and specificity in the cell line
2.  We are initially focusing on animal health and crop production due to the experimental validation of our therapeutic's effectiveness on a shared pathogen
3.  We are developing drug delivery systems that minimize toxicity and immunogenicity while providing precise spatiotemporal control for targeted drug release
4.  Considering the human case, our therapeutic has the potential to treat various cancer types and become a standard-of-care treatment with blockbuster potential



Illustration of our solution. Nanoparticles carrying the killer compound (orange) infiltrate the target cell like a Trojan horse and activate drug release upon targeting our newly discovered pathway.

### 💡**Key facts about our solution:**

➔   High killing efficacy

➔   Designed to specifically target malignant cells while preserving the surrounding healthy cells and ensuring no toxicity or adverse side effects

➔   Highly suitable to become a platform solution (i.e., therapeutic development pipeline expanded to multiple disease areas and organisms)

➔   Scalable, stable, and easy to manufacture

👋**Our Asks:**
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*   Share this post with your network and help spread the word!
*   If you’re as excited as we are about this novel approach, email us to learn more about it at [emmanouela@acxtherapeutics.com](mailto:emmanouela@acxtherapeutics.com)
