Clinical trials were being done with two drugs promising to shorten and simplify tuberculosis treatment, the developers said Thursday on the sidelines of a global lung health conference in Cape Town.
"Two new promising TB drugs in our portfolio are moving forward in clinical trials, offering patients worldwide the hope of a markedly shorter and better TB treatment," TB Alliance president Maria Freire said in a statement.
"This is a historic milestone in our accelerated drive to develop new TB drugs that fight the disease in different, faster and better ways to help save millions of lives."
The TB Alliance is a non-profit initiative focusing on the development of new tuberculosis treatments in the face of spreading drug resistance in patients globally.
It said one of the drugs, an antibiotic called moxifloxacin, was entering the third phase of clinical trials in Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia. The trials would determine whether a four-drug combination that includes moxifloxacin could reduce TB treatment time from the current six months to four months or less.
The second drug, PA-824, was entering the second phase of clinical trials on TB patients in Cape Town, said the statement.
"Due to its novel mechanism of action, PA-824 shows promise for treatment of drug-sensitive and drug-resistant TB."
Tuberculosis killed more than 1.5 million people a year.
The current four-drug TB treatment regimen, a product of research in the 1960s, can cure the disease if patients complete at least six months of treatment.
But many stop taking their medicine, causing TB strains that are resistant to common drugs.
"Reducing the time it takes for patients to finish the full course of drugs ... would make treatment much easier for patients and healthcare workers, saving lives and money and curbing the threat of deadly drug-resistance," the alliance said.