Antibiotics maker Melinta emerges from bankruptcy under new ownership

One of New Haven’s earliest biotechnology companies has emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy and has officially handed over ownership to a New York health-care investment firm.

Melinta Therapeutics Inc. announced the completion of its financial restructuring on its website on Monday, and the new owners say they are now eyeing an expansion of the company’s drug portfolio. 

Co-founded in 2000 as Rib-X Pharmaceuticals by a Nobel Prize-winning Yale scientist, Melinta swapped $140 million in debt for 100 percent equity under the reorganization, which was approved by a U.S. bankruptcy court on March 13 and confirmed on April 2.

The antibiotics maker, which previously traded on the Nasdaq stock exchange, is now privately owned by affiliates of Deerfield Management Co., its principal creditor. 

Deerfield lent Melinta more than $147 million to help finance its $270 million acquisition of the Medicine Co.’s infectious disease business in January 2018, according to company filings with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission.

“We welcome this partnership with Deerfield in continuing to best serve the needs of patients in the hospital and look forward to the new opportunities for innovation and growth that this partnership will bring,” Jennifer Sanfilippo, interim CEO of the reorganized company, said in a statement. 

Melinta said Monday it will continue to supply, distribute and support its four commercial antibiotics — Baxdela, Vabomere, Orbactiv and Minocin — which treat diseases ranging from urinary tract infections to serious skin infections such as those caused by methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

The company won FDA approval for Baxdela to treat MRSA in 2017, and was green-lighted to market the drug for community-acquired bacterial pneumonia last year, but postponed that launch because of the company’s financial woes.

Melinta acquired the other three antibiotics in the Medicines Co. deal, but struggled financially after sales of its drugs fell short of expectations. 

The company dismantled its discovery research team in late 2018 in a cost-cutting move and a few months later shuttered its flagship New Haven office, citing headwinds in the antibiotics market, considered one of the toughest in the pharmaceutical industry.

The company said it is now well-financed and plans to tap Deerfield’s “operations, business development, data analytics and market research expertise” to grow the company and add new commercial and clinical-stage drug candidates to its pipeline.

“COVID-19 is a wake-up call regarding the dangers of infectious diseases and the need for anti-infective products to serve the public health,” Deerfield Partner Jonathan Leff said in a statement. “We are delighted to join Melinta on this journey.”

In an email late Wednesday afternoon, Sanfilippo said the company is considering expanding in the anti-microbial space as well as branching out into other high-need therapeutic areas.

She said Melinta sold most of the rights to its ESKAPE pathogen program to a Swiss biopharmaceutical company in 2019, but the company may consider investing in other early-stage drug candidates. 

The ESKAPE program, which was still preclinical, was based on Nobel Prize-winning Yale research and sought to develop a single antibiotic that would kill six of the deadliest superbugs. (Each letter in the acronym stands for a bug with multi-drug resistance features.) It was being developed in New Haven and was shelved when the company laid off its New Haven R&D team.

Sanfilippo said the company now has 110 employees working at offices in Morristown, N.J. and Lincolnshire, Ill.