News about 'Front Lines of TB R&D'

A biochip assay- an example of a diagnostic test based on disease biomarkers By far, one of the greatest needs in TB R&D is the identification of biomarkers. The value of biomarkers cannot be overemphasized. Briefly, we will highlight what biomarkers are, how they are used, and describe their...

credit: Mary O'Reilly Science Illustration By Gerry Waters, Senior Director, Biology at the TB Alliance A team of researchers led by Rainer Kalscheuer and Bill Jacobs at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York recently published a paper titled “Self-poisoning of M. tuberculosis by...

How much does the nose know about TB? In a post a few weeks ago , we highlighted HeroRats , African-pouch rats, and their use for TB diagnoses. As described in that article, these rats are trained to distinguish positive TB samples verses negative TB samples presumably due to the release of...

NYAS On April 6 th , the New York Academy of Sciences hosted a mini-symposium entitled ‘Tuberculosis: Novel Therapies through Knowledge of the Genetics of the Causative Agent.’ The five research scientists who presented were: William R. Jacobs, Jr . (Albert Einstein College of Medicine),...

IJTLD The International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (IJTLD) is the official publication of the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (The Union). The IJTLD is the reference for clinical research and epidemiological studies on tuberculosis. It is also the only peer-...

Many antibiotics used today to fight and control M. tb infection target cell wall synthesis or DNA replication, and related pathogen growth mechanisms. A recent report by Zhou et al. in PNAS at the beginning of year, suggested an alternate mechanism for M. tb elimination; targeting MptpB, a...

Rat TB testing apparatus The use of animal models for drug discovery is a key step in the process. Rodents, in particular mice, have been indispensible for understanding the pharmacodynamics (what the drug does to the body) and pharmacokinetics (the time-course of how the body handles the drug) of...

CPTR could deliver a new TB regimen in just 6 years as opposed to 24 After a decades-long drought, new pharmaceutical discoveries and repurposing of existing antimicrobials have produced about 10 drugs from 7 different classes which are now in various stages of clinical development for TB. Many...

Today marks the launch of an exciting new initiative in TB R&D. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has supported the Critical Path to TB Drug Regimens (CPTR). The CPTR comprises a broad collaborative network of partners including pharmaceutical companies, government, academia, and...

Zebrafish as TB animal model When studying an infection it’s important to have access to a model for examining the progression of disease. In tuberculosis research, such model systems range from mice to guinea pigs to primates, with many species in between. Lalita Ramakrishnan has spent much of her...

autophagy by any other name... The WGND blog is in the R&D vanguard! Recently, Nick Be wrote a post highlighting the activation of the cellular ‘self-eating’ mechanism known as autophagy in the elimination of TB from an infected individual. On March 5, 2010, Cell published a paper by Kumar and...

Detailed view of the ligand-binding site of EthR co-crystallized with BDM31381 (EthRInhibitor) Developing new TB drugs is inhibited by so many factors – namely: The flow through the TB drug pipeline is slow at best. Despite decades of hard work, we still use the demanding regimen developed 50 years...

source: http://www.glsynthesis.com/drug-discovery.html Drug discovery teams around the world have been actively selecting targets that are likely to be important in killing dormant or very slowly replicating tuberculosis in an effort to shorten the time to cure; for drug sensitive TB, six to nine...

Welcome to the weekly TB R&D news highlights series! The goal of the WGND blog as highlighted during our launch is to stimulate global conversation pertaining to TB research and development. In order to further discussion, every Tuesday we will attempt to highlight selected stories in TB drug...