Publications and Presentations

TB Alliance Drug Discovery and Development: Harnessing Global Resources to Address a Global Disease

TB Alliance Drug Discovery and Development: Harnessing Global Resources to Address a Global Disease

Apr 15, 2016

Dr Chris Cooper, TB Alliance, gave this presentation at “Streamlining Drug Discovery and Development” held in San Francisco, CA, USA on 14 April 2016.

Abstract
TB is a leading cause of mortality and morbidity globally, killing 1.4 million people every year,1 and robbing millions more of health, hope, and prosperity. Current TB regimens are highly inadequate requiring 6-24 months to complete treatment. Protracted treatment times result in poor adherence and consequently promote the development of multi-drug resistant (MDR) and extensively drug resistant (XDR) TB. Treatment options for drug resistant TB are complex, toxic, and expensive, with less than 10% of MDR TB patients receiving proper care, and of those, more than a third failing to be fully cured.
TB Alliance is championing the world’s search for better, faster, and affordable cures for drug sensitive (DS) as well as drug resistant (DR) TB. As a not-for-profit, product development partnership, the Alliance builds collaborations and synergies between the public, private, academic, and philanthropic sectors to drive the discovery and development of new TB treatments for underserved markets. Today, TB Alliance’s portfolio includes: (a) a Phase III clinical candidate which could be the first new drug to treat DS TB in nearly fifty years, (b) the first novel TB drug combination developed from two new TB Alliance drug candidates, and (c) a robust discovery pipeline with more than twenty active projects in all.
In this presentation, an overview of the Alliance’s operating model will be discussed. Additionally, a brief survey of the TB drug discovery landscape will be offered to illustrate areas of TB research globally. Finally, the case history of TBA-354 (a novel best-in-class nitroimidazole antitubercular agent currently advancing through Phase I clinical trials) will be described as an illustration of TB Alliance’s strategic approach to contemporary drug discovery and development.

1. World Health Organization (WHO), “Global Tuberculosis Report 2013,” ISBN 978 92 4 156465 6, http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/91355/1/9789241564656_eng.pdf , 2013.

You can download this presentation as a PDF.