Novartis teams up with Global Alliance for TB Drug Development

The NITD, Singapore.

“Since the NITD’s establishment in 2002, its core strategy has been to collaborate with other organisations 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 organisation to bring a novel TB drug candidate to Phase II trials.

Under the collaboration, the partners will share information on new and ongoing TB drug discovery projects and work together to develop novel antibiotics.

“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 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.”

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 treatment.

Erratic or inconsistent exposure to drugs breeds drug-resistant strains that increasingly defy current medicines. According to the World Health Organization, 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 NITD relies on establishing key partnerships to augment its research activities and recognises 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.