The TB Alliance’s mission – to shorten and improve TB treatment – will ultimately rest on designing a new regimen based on entirely novel and faster-acting drugs. That idea is now becoming a realistic vision.
With the recent addition of several novel compounds to the development pipeline, the potential exists for more rapid progress than envisioned just a few years ago. Since its creation in 2000, the TB Alliance has engaged research institutes, big pharma and academic laboratories to build its own growing pipeline of TB drugs as well as support the initiatives of others. We are pleased to report that after four years, a new global TB pipeline finally exists.
Our diversified strategy is to develop derivatives of existing TB drugs, to research antibiotics never yet tested for a TB indication and to explore entirely novel compounds. Selected highlights from 2004 include the following additions or advances in three promising classes:
- Quinolones -- There are three separate quinolone programs underway under the auspices of the TB Alliance: 1. an early discovery sponsored research project in Korea to synthesize and optimize hundreds of novel quinolones; 2. advance discussions to acquire and develop a non-fluorinated quinolone, and 3. coordinate a large-scale clinical testing program with moxifloxacin, an antibiotic currently tested by CDC trials consortium and owned by Bayer AG.
- Macrolides – The TB Alliance launched a program this year with researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago to develop a promising antibiotic designed specifically for TB. Erythromycin derivatives in this class have excellent pharmacological activities and reasonable TB potency in vitro.
- Nitroimidazoles – With PA-824 on track to enter the clinic in the first half of 2005, further examination of its sterilizing and bactericidal activity was demonstrated this year. To maximize the potential of this novel class, the TB Alliance started a partnership with Novartis Institute of Tropical Diseases in Singapore and with the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to identify other promising analogs with similar or better drug features.
Any healthy pipeline regularly adds and stops certain projects which do not meet milestones or other preset criteria. In 2004, two projects were terminated: one quinolone under investigation and an early stage discovery project to explore alkaloids and ascididemins.