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TAG 2010 Pipeline Report

Treatment Action Group (TAG) recently released their TAG 2010 Pipeline Report, an annual report that explores the progress and overall state of drug development in the fields of HIV, Tuberculosis, and Viral Hepatitis. The report covers the development of drugs, diagnostics, vaccines, immune-based therapies, and preventative technologies in development in each field.
This week in TB R&D – 7 July 2010

In our latest ‘Sanatorium Files’ post ‘Diagnosis Dilemma’, we commented on the current advances in TB diagnostics. We’re following up on this theme for the next couple of posts to share the scientific data supporting some of the most promising of these new diagnostic tools.
This year, two reports were published in the Journal of Clinical [...]
TB Alliance: New Potential TB Drugs to be Investigated Against Multiple Neglected Diseases

New York, United States and Geneva, Switzerland — July 7, 2010 The TB Alliance and Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi) announced today a unique first-ever royalty-free license agreement between two not-for-profit drug developers that speeds progress toward markedly improved therapy of multiple neglected diseases.
This Week in TB R&D – 29 June 2010
This Week in TB R&D – 1 June 2010

A team of researchers led by Rainer Kalscheuer and Bill Jacobs at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York recently published a paper titled “Self-poisoning of M. tuberculosis by targeting GlgE in an alpha-glucan pathway” in Nature Chemical Biology (2010, vol 6, pg 376). From the perspective of basic biology, the work represents the first time a biosynthetic pathway from the disaccharide trehalose to alpha-glucan, a polysaccharide with several potential functions, has been described.
The Week in TB R&D – 27 April 2010

In a post a few weeks ago, we highlighted HeroRats, African-pouch rats, and their use for TB diagnoses. As described in that article, these rats are trained to distinguish positive TB samples verses negative TB samples presumably due to the release of volatile organic compounds (VOC) produced by M. tb. Not surprisingly, review of the [...]
This week in TB R&D – 12 April 2010

On April 6th, the New York Academy of Sciences hosted a mini-symposium entitled ‘Tuberculosis: Novel Therapies through Knowledge of the Genetics of the Causative Agent.’ The five research scientists who presented were: William R. Jacobs, Jr. (Albert Einstein College of Medicine), Christopher Sassetti (University of Massachusetts Medical School), Dirk Schnappinger (Weill Cornell Medical College), Helena [...]
May 2010 issue of IJTLD now available online
This Week in TB R&D – 5 April 2010

Many antibiotics used today to fight and control M. tb infection target cell wall synthesis or DNA replication, and related pathogen growth mechanisms. A recent report by Zhou et al. in PNAS at the beginning of year, suggested an alternate mechanism for M. tb elimination; targeting MptpB, a mycobacterium specific protein tyrosine phosphatase.








