Research Spotlight: The TB Alliance: overcoming challenges to chart the future course of TB drug development

Abstract

The Global Alliance for TB Drug Development (TB Alliance) is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the discovery and development of faster-acting and affordable drugs to fight TB. TB kills nearly 2 million people each year, partly due to the inadequacy of the current treatment. There have been no new drugs registered for TB in more than 40 years, but new partnership models over the past decade have enabled tremendous progress in the pipeline. With 10 clinical compounds now in development globally, the TB Alliance is embarking on a new paradigm of clinical development, one that leverages both new and existing compounds to discover and develop markedly shorter, simpler, faster-acting and less toxic multidrug regimens that can treat both drug-sensitive and multidrug-resistant TB concurrently, dramatically simplifying treatment and facilitating the scale-up of global treatment efforts.