We are delete.bio and we combine virtual care and bacteriophage therapy to help doctors, clinics and virtual healthcare organizations manage and treat patients' diabetic foot ulcer wounds and infections.
Diabetic foot ulcer wounds are a massive problem in the United States. Complications from diabetic foot wounds cost the US healthcare around $80 billion every year. Every 20 seconds, someone loses a limb to diabetes, and 85% of diabetes-related amputations start with a wound. In the US, between 1M and 3.5M people have suffered diabetic foot ulcers, and "one in every three dollars spent on diabetes care is linked to diabetic foot ulcers".
The main problem behind diabetic foot amputations is methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Its antibiotic resistant properties, combined with low blood flow to the extremities makes diabetic foot ulcer infections very hard to treat with traditional antibiotics.
Our solution is to use phages — or viruses that kill bacteria — as a therapy in order to specifically target and kill the multi-drug resistant Staph infection. Once the Staph is cleared, standard antibiotics treatments have been shown to resume effectivity. Our solution also allows for patients to treat themselves at home to ensure wound healing while saving the number of trips to the clinic.
In a few clinical case series, bacteriophage-based treatments (or "phage therapy") have been shown to be superior to traditional antibiotics in diabetic foot ulcers. By combining phage therapy with a virtual at-home treatment program, we can reduce the costs of treatments per patient, while increasing the number of patients clinics could handle at a time.
Initially, we plan to partner with virtual health companies, hospitals, clinics, and doctors and podiatrists. We plan on charging a fee for access to our service, which includes access to our doctors and specialists, our phage diagnostics services, remote patient monitoring service, and our system that expedites phage treatments through FDA's EIND compassionate use pipeline. This last portion is only necessary until more diabetic foot ulcer clinical trials complete in the next few years (e.g. the French PhagoPied trial, which started in 2021), we anticipate phage treatments for foot ulcers to accelerate.
The total healthcare outcome is to increase quality of life by treating diabetic foot ulcers. We want to both shorten treatment time and reduce the number of amputations, while also decreasing per patient costs and time spent. Initially, our target customer is clinicians treating diabetic foot ulcer infections, but our larger goal is to expand our phage therapy and remote monitoring process to other areas of acute and chronic infection control, including urinary tract infections, Hidradenitis Suppurativa, IBD, and many other areas.
The top competitors in this market include some well-funded phage biotech companies currently developing their treatments. These include Armata Pharmaceuticals, Adaptive Phage Therapeutics, BiomX, and Locus Biosciences. Each of these companies is focusing on researching, developing, and patenting their own phage products (called phage cocktails) and bringing them to market through clinical trials. We differentiate by focusing on the clinical and patient aspect of healthcare, rather than drug development. Although we have our own phage collection, we plan on eventually using phages available on the market rather than our own. By focusing on delivering the best-in-class infection control management solution.
Currently, we are working with a podiatrist who has published a case series of nine patients successfully treated with phages for diabetic foot ulcer (source). We already have partners on-board for phage and sample diagnostic testing, and we have phages on hand for treatments.