The Novartis Institute for Tropical Diseases (NITD) and the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development (TB Alliance) announced a five-year research collaboration designed to yield new medicines for TB, including drug-resistant TB. The partnership is a milestone toward the development of faster TB drug regimens that treat all forms of TB, are easier for patients to complete, and can be used safely in patients with HIV/AIDS.

"Since the NITD's establishment in 2002, its core strategy has been to collaborate with other organizations to develop and deliver life-saving treatments to those who need them," said Paul Herrling, chairman of NITD and head of Corporate Research at Novartis. "Our dedicated research team will leverage our expertise gained throughout the past six years of NITD's TB efforts in partnership with the TB Alliance." The TB Alliance is the first not-for-profit organization to bring a novel TB drug candidate to Phase II trials.

Under the collaboration, the NITD and the TB Alliance will share information on new and ongoing TB drug discovery projects. The agreement clears the pathway for future collaborative development of novel antibiotic compounds. This partnership offers the opportunity for significant progress in the TB drug pipeline, which has grown considerably in the last few years due, in large part, to the resurgent efforts of the TB Alliance and its public-private partners.

"While the global TB crisis shows no signs of abating, new treatments that are easier for patients to complete and that attack TB in new, faster ways are desperately needed," said Dr. Jerome Premmereur, president and CEO of the TB Alliance. "We are confident our collaboration with NITD will not only produce promising anti-TB drug candidates, but will serve as an industry model in combining resources, expertise and willpower to tackle one of the greatest public health threats of our time".

It is estimated that one-third of the world's population is infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M.tb), the bacterium that causes TB. Active TB disease killed over 1.5 million people in 2006, according to the latest data from the World Health Organization (WHO).

Drug-susceptible TB can be cured with a four-drug combination, taken ideally under direct observation, but this takes six to nine months, and only works if patients complete the long and often burdensome process.

Erratic or inconsistent exposure to drugs breeds drug-resistant strains that increasingly defy current medicines. According to the WHO, there were nearly 490,000 cases of multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB) worldwide in 2006. MDR-TB is defined as TB that is resistant to isoniazid and rifampicin, two of the mainstay drugs in today's four-drug, first-line TB treatment regimen.

In HIV-infected patients whose immune systems are weakened, TB is the leading cause of death. However, the current first-line TB drug regimen is not compatible with certain common antiretroviral therapies used to treat HIV/AIDS.

The new collaboration supports the overall mission of both the NITD and the TB Alliance, as they are committed to improving access to medicines and helping reduce the overall global TB disease burden.

The NITD relies on establishing key partnerships to augment its research activities and recognizes the importance of such partnerships, such as the TB Alliance, to help support the advancement of drug discovery for neglected disease under its not-for-profit mission statement. In 2004, the NITD and TB Alliance collaborated to develop potential drugs for the treatment of tuberculosis from a class of chemical compounds called nitroimidazopyrans.