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Mission & History
Our mission is to accelerate the discovery and development of faster-acting and affordable drugs to fight tuberculosis. Through innovative science and with partners around the world, we aim to ensure equitable access to faster, better tuberculosis cures that will advance global health and prosperity.
The Global Alliance for TB Drug Development (TB Alliance) is a not-for-profit, product development partnership accelerating the discovery and development of new tuberculosis (TB) drugs that will shorten treatment, be effective against susceptible and resistant strains, be compatible with antiretroviral therapies for those HIV-TB patients currently on such therapies, and improve treatment of latent infection.
TB is a contagious disease of global proportions, killing someone every twenty seconds. Today's TB drugs are more than 40 years old and must be taken for at least 6 months. Long, demanding treatment schedules prove too much for many patients, and the resulting erratic or inconsistent treatment breeds drug resistance. New drugs are desperately needed to save millions of lives needlessly lost to TB. Mounting resistance to today's drugs, including multi and extensively drug-resistant TB (MDR-TB and XDR-TB), coupled with a growing number of patients co-infected with TB and HIV, are making the pandemic more threatening and more deadly.
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Working with public and private research laboratories worldwide, the TB Alliance is leading the advancement of the most comprehensive portfolio of TB drug candidates in history. The TB Alliance merges the best practices of the public and private sectors to meet this critical, global health need. As the leading developer of new TB drugs, we catalyze and convene — bringing together the top minds of science and business to achieve our goals. Our value proposition and bottom line come down, simply, to the millions of tuberculosis patients worldwide who need us to succeed.
The TB Alliance is committed to ensuring that approved new regimens are affordable, adopted and available to those who need them. Recognizing that new, faster and better TB drugs will only be effective if they are affordable and available, the TB Alliance and its partners are working with global, regional, and national stakeholders to ensure regulatory approval, adoption by TB programs, and widespread availability of new drug regimens.
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History of the TB Alliance
The TB Alliance was conceived at a February 2000 meeting in Cape Town, South Africa, where 120 representatives from academia, industry, major agencies, non-governmental organizations, and donors gathered to discuss the problems of TB treatment. Participants stressed the need for new TB drugs, highlighting the unprecedented scientific opportunities and the economic rationale for developing new medicines. The resulting "Declaration of Cape Town" provided a road map for TB drug development, outlining the need for the creation of the TB Alliance. Cape Town signatory institutions formed the original Stakeholders Association for the nascent organization.
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The TB Alliance was formally launched in October 2000, at the International Conference on Health Research for Development, in Bangkok, Thailand. In her keynote address, Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, then Director General of the World Health Organization, called the TB Alliance "a shining example of public and private sector partnerships to bridge the gap between market opportunities and people's needs."
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