Recent news
January 2012
Drug resistant TB cases highlight need for R&D to produce new tools
January 26, 2012 -- This month, several cases of drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) were reported in India, reinforcing the need for research and development (R&D) that will help address the ever-growing challenge of increasing resistance to available TB tools. Twelve cases of a form of TB—resistant to all first- and second-line drugs—emerged at a hospital in Mumbai, three of which turned fatal. The first form of completely drug-resistant TB was reported in Italy in 2007. While the discovery of this form of TB raised concerns that new forms of drug-resistant TB are emerging, researchers are calling the cases in India the latest development of a long-standing problem that highlights the need for R&D to develop new prevention and treatment tools.
The growing number of drug resistant cases, coupled with the lack of new treatments to fight the disease, highlights the need to spur development to identify new tools and drugs to prevent, diagnose, and treat TB. No new first-line drugs have been developed in more than five decades, which experts believe is contributing to the rise of drug resistant strains of the disease.
“If you keep using the same drugs for that long, resistance is inevitable,” said Carole Mitnick, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School.
Fortunately, several product development partnerships, including one between GHTC member the TB Alliance and pharmaceutical company Tibotec have formed in recent years to conduct R&D for new TB treatment tools. At the end of 2011, there were 11 new or repurposed TB drugs that would either shorten the treatment cycle for the disease or improve therapy for drug resistant TB in clinical trials.
Additionally, late last year, several organizations including AstraZeneca, Bayer, Sanofi, Tibotec and the World Health Organization joined the TB Alliance to launch a partnership through the Critical Path to TB Drug Regimens in order to accelerate development for new TB drug combinations. While the development of TB drugs has historically been a slow process, this collaboration aims to accelerate the process by enabling these organizations to share information from their drug pipelines and better identify opportunities to test their compounds in combination.
“It is critical that we decrease the complexity and duration of treatment, make the treatment of multi-drug resistant TB significantly easier and more tolerable and make new regimens available to all those who need them as quickly as possible,” said Dr. Mel Spigelman, President and CEO of the TB Alliance.
Another partnership was recently formed between GHTC member Aeras and a leading Chinese biotechnology company to help develop an affordable and viable protection against the disease. The goal of this collaboration is to develop a vaccine that will prevent all strains of TB, including the most drug-resistant ones.
“The synergy created by bringing together our scientific and manufacturing expertise could have a substantial impact on efforts to advance innovative candidates in TB vaccine development,” said Jim Connolly, president and CEO of Aeras.
BCG, the only vaccine currently available to prevent the disease, is nearly 100 years old and ineffective in preventing the most infectious form of the disease for most populations.
On the Aeras website, the organization calls BCG “unreliable” and outlines that “although BCG is the most widely administered vaccine in the world, there have never been as many cases of TB on the planet. There is therefore an urgent need for a modern, safe, and effective vaccine that would prevent all forms of TB, including the drug-resistant strains, in all age groups and among people with HIV.”
- To read the story about the drug resistant TB reported in India in Nature, click here
- To read the WHO fact sheet on drug resistant TB, click here
- To read more about the work Aeras is doing to develop a vaccine, click here
- To read more about the partnership to develop new drugs to treat TB, click here
- To read an interview with a physician from India on Science Speaks, click here
- To read more about the partnership between the TB Alliance and Tibotec, click here
