| Developing New Treatments | |
TB Drug Portfolio |
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TB Drug Portfolio
Since its founding in 2000, the TB Alliance has built the largest, most diverse tuberculosis drug pipeline in history.
The TB Alliance currently manages three drug candidates in clinical trials, along with thousands of compounds being screened, synthesized, or optimized in discovery and preclinical studies.
The objective is an entirely novel therapeutic regimen that will markedly shorten and simplify treatment. A faster, better TB drug regimen will improve patient compliance, increase cure rates, lower toxic side effects, and could save millions of lives. As new treatments are developed, the TB Alliance hopes to reduce the time to cure TB from the current six-or more months it currently takes for patients to finish the course of treatment. The long term goal is a cure that can be administered in less than two weeks, similar to those for many other bacterial infections. However, progress is likely to be incremental.
The TB Alliance selects development projects through a rigorous screening process, based on their potential to shorten TB's time to cure, effectiveness against multidrug-resistant strains, compatibility with anti-retroviral therapy for patients with TB-HIV co-infection, and ability to improve the treatment of latent infection. Other attributes prioritized when selecting development projects include affordable cost of good and suitability for once-daily oral administration.
Projects advance through worldwide collaboration with academia, the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, public research institutes, and non-governmental organizations.
 The TB Alliance operates as a virtual R&D organization — acquiring, in-licensing, or co-developing promising compounds, with laboratory research outsourced to public and private partners. Every project is different, with each program designed to move drugs forward as efficiently as possible. Projects are overseen by TB Alliance staff members with input from its Scientific Advisory Committee and outside consultants. There are predefined, measurable milestones, and clear go/no-go decision points with common evaluation criteria. Innovative intellectual property agreements ensure the affordability of the developed drugs, especially in poorer, high-endemic countries. At the TB Alliance, drug development isn't finished until a better cure is in the hands of those who need it.
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