Bill Cheliak doesn’t believe the world needs a new, amazing antibiotic to kill superbugs — lethal strains of pathogens that are resistant to antibiotics. It simply needs ways to make antibiotics more effective. And he believes his company, Chelation Partners Inc. of Halifax, has found how to do it.

Chelation is working on a product that can be combined with existing or new antibiotics so that superbugs (or other drug-resistant microbial populations) are no longer resistant to them. Chelation’s drug deprives the bacteria of iron, and that weakens the micro-organism so the antibiotic can do its job.

Last week, Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency’s Atlantic Innovation Fund awarded the company a $2.8-million loan to help finance this work.

 “Iron is a critically important part of our ability to live,” Cheliak, the company’s vice-president of business development, said at the Atlantic Venture Forum last week. “If you or any other living creature have too much or too little, you have serious problems.”

Chelation received $500,000 in equity investment a few years ago, which it used to attract other funds from several government programs. That means its team in Halifax has been able to develop the drug, and funding from the Atlantic Innovation Fund will allow it to go through Phase 1 trials (which assess its safety in humans) in the U.S. and Canada by early 2015.

What the company must assess is whether the drug affects the iron content of a human patient’s blood, which could be too big a problem to overcome. “This is either going to be very big or it’s going to go away very quickly,” said Cheliak. “We’ll know by 2015.”

The reason this drug could be big is the global concern about the possible outbreak in the future of a lethal superbug and the medical community’s inability to battle it. Health officials worldwide have been warning that the pipeline of new antibiotics may be insufficient to fight new pathogens. (Pathogens are micro-organisms that cause diseases in their host.)

 “With the proper investment and time, Chelation has the potential to be a billion-dollar company,” said James Drage, the founder of Atlantic Venture Capital and an investor in the company.

The Chelation drug — known within the company as DIBI — would make antibiotics more effective so patients would have to take less of a drug, reducing health costs and sparing them the side effects of the medication.

Chelation is one of two Halifax companies that are working on finding ways to kill superbugs. The other is DeNovaMed, which is isolating a compound to kill drug-resistant bacteria. Cheliak said Chelation’s drug could be combined with DeNovaMed’s to increase its effectiveness.

Cheliak said the reason DIBI could be such a big success is drug companies could combine it with existing drugs to differentiate them from their competitors. And drugs nearing the expiry of their patent could be combined with Chelation’s drug to produce a new medication, and thereby be patented anew.

Finally, the drug could be combined with new compounds to enhance their effectiveness and make them stand out when they launch.

Assuming that Chelation passes Phase 1 trials, Cheliak said it would need about $15 million in funding to go through Phase 2 trials, which assess whether the drug is effective in doing what it claims it can do.