New Era of TB Drug Discovery and Its Impact on Disease Management

Opinion statement

Tuberculosis (TB) is a devastating infectious disease that continues to plague the world, despite improved hygiene, massive vaccination efforts and an arsenal of chemotherapeutic agents. Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), the causative agent of TB, is a slow-growing bacterium that naturally resists most currently known antibiotics. Emergences of ever-increasing drug-resistant Mtb strains threaten our ability to control the disease. Unfortunately, lethargic drug development efforts led to the approval of only one new TB drug in the last 50 years by the US Food and Drug Administration. This dismal progress warrants a re-evaluation of approaches and methods for new TB drug discovery. Although successful in the past, the continuous use of in vitro drug discovery methods eroded recent attempts towards TB drug discovery, caused by a pathogen that inhabits human cells. Advances in recent years include the development of new intracellular screening protocols using relevant disease models. Pilot studies have yielded new lead compounds filling the pipeline for further development. Furthermore, these studies have revealed new insights to forecast changes in diagnostics and chemotherapies against this notorious infectious agent.

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