New York (October 7, 2024) – TB Alliance is proud to announce a $7.35 million award through the U.S. Department of Defense. The four-year grant was received within the DOD’s Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP) for research and development exploring host-directed approaches for treating tuberculosis.
The project aims to yield preclinical proof-of-concept for at least one novel adjunct TB host-directed therapy and one therapeutic vaccine that will lay a foundation for clinical development of host-directed interventions.
As the prime recipient on the project, TB Alliance will be spearheading the work with a number of partners, including Johns Hopkins University, Washington University in St. Louis, Archivel Farma, University of Pittsburgh, Hackensack Meridian Health, University of Bordeaux, University of Michigan, the University of Illinois Chicago, the University of Sydney, and the University of California San Francisco.
Upon news of the award, Nader Fotouhi, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer for TB Alliance and principal investigator on the initiative, noted, “If successful, these advancements will bring us closer to shorter, less burdensome, and more effective treatment for individuals with both drug-resistant and drug-sensitive TB.”
Dr. Mel Spigelman, CEO of TB Alliance echoed Fotouhi’s remarks, noting that, “TB Alliance has made important strides in shortening and improving TB therapy through developing new drugs and treatment regimens, but today's therapies are still too long and onerous for achieving the ultimate goal of TB eradication. Combining new TB drugs with Host Directed Therapy is a potential path to achieving our vision of bringing TB treatment duration from months to weeks, and eventually to days.”
TB Alliance is a nonprofit product development partnership that leads the development of the world’s largest drug pipeline for the treatment of TB. Since 1992, Congressional appropriations through CDMRP have fostered groundbreaking work in basic, translational and clinical research.
Learn more at tballiance.org.