Halifax-based drug discovery company Appili Therapeutics Inc. has announced $3.3 million in funding and outlined a strategy based on “hitting singles and home runs”.

Standing in his recently opened lab, Founder and CEO Kevin Sullivan said the company is now working on a drug with a limited market that should be on the market in a few years, and a larger, riskier project to combat antibiotic-resistant viruses.

Appili, which has become a more visible member of the Halifax biotech grouping this year, said at a press conference the funding included $2.3 million in equity investment. Several private investors – who were brought to the company by the Toronto investment boutique Bloom Burton & Co., which helped to found Appili – contributed $1.8 million. And Innovacorp, Nova Scotia’s early-stage venture capital agency, invested $500,000.

Appili was also able to secure just over $1 million from two federal agencies. The Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency lent the company $500,000 through the Business Development Program and contributed $100,000 for productivity and business skills development. National Research Council Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program, or Irap, is contributing $409,000.

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Sullivan said he is already talking to investors about the next round of funding, which he hopes to announce in the autumn.

Appili recently received a key U.S. regulatory designation for a drug that treats Clostridium difficile infection, or CDI, in children.

The Food and Drug Administration has granted orphan drug designation to its drug candidate ATI-1501. This medicine removes the bitter taste from a long-standing drug so that children are more willing to take it, thereby improving its effectiveness. A drug called Metronidazole has been used to treat the condition since the 1970s, but kids don’t want to take it because of its dreadful taste.

The FDA granted the application because CDI is one of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s most urgent antibiotic-resistant bacterial threats. It affects more than 500,000 Canadians and Americans each year and causes 29,000 deaths annually.

“One thing we like about the [orphan drug] program is it’s a pretty rapid program,” said Sullivan.

He said ATI-1501 will be in clinical trials in 2017 and because the efficacy of the legacy drug has already been established it should be on the market in three or four years.

Meanwhile, the company is also ATI-1503, an antibiotic that could fight deadly infections such as Klebsiella pneumonia. He noted the risks posed by viruses that are resistant to antibiotics and said this drug could help combat them, but it’s a longer, riskier project than the first drug.

“We intend to build a company by hitting singles and home runs,” he said. “ATI-1503 has real home run potential.”