
The 243rd American Chemistry Society National Meeting and Exposition is being held in San Diego, California, from March 26 to March 29. There are several presentations on tuberculosis. Here are the abstracts of a few of the talks. The first item received news coverage and discusses two approved antibiotics that may prove effective in treating TB. Additional links to TB R&D News are included.
This week we interview Dr. Yossef Av-Gay and discuss his recently published paper, his contribution to TB drug discovery and the focus of his research. Dr. Av-Gay, a professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of British Columbia, recently published a paper in PNAS that provides evidence to that points to a specific protein that allows Mtb to bypass the body’s defenses. Additional TB R&D news links are included.
This week’s featured article from Bill Jacob’s lab looks at novel InhA (target of isoniazid (INH), a first-line TB drug) inhibitors and their ability to kill M. tuberculosis (M.tb) that is drug-sensitive, resistant and in dormant stage. Two compounds were identified that had significant bactericidal activity against M.tb: CD 39 and CD117. Additional links to TB R&D News are included.
his week, we present an article from researchers from the Instituto de Biotecnologia and TB Control Program in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The article focuses on the P27-P55 operon which has been shown in mice to be essential for M. tuberculosis (M. tb) to survive in the host. Additional links to TB R&D news are included.
This week we look again at the role of efflux pumps in resistance to anti-tuberculosis drugs. Louw, et al., sought to “demonstrate that the level of rifampicin resistance is defined by efflux, which regulates the intracellular concentration of rifampicin.” This is a shift from the current thinking in the field that rifampicin resistance is solely the result of mutations in the rpoB gene. The article entitled “Rifampicin Reduces Susceptibility to Ofloxacin in Rifampicin Resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis through Efflux” was published ahead of print in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. Additional links to TB R&D News is included.
The WGND had the opportunity to interview three researchers (Lalita Ramakrishnan, Paul Edelstein, and Christine Cosma) involved in the groundbreaking research on the role of efflux pumps in contributing to drug tolerance during TB treatment which was published in the April 1 issue of Cell. Additional links to TB R&D News are included.
In this week’s article which was published online ahead of print, Elkington, et al., presents significant data to support the premise that M. tuberculosis infection drives proteolytic destruction of the lung matrix contributing to lung damage caused by TB and to the morbidity and mortality of TB. Additional links to TB R&D News are included.