Welcome to the Working Group on New TB Drugs Blog
This Week in TB – Report from Open Forum 4
While there were few new TB treatment prospects a few years ago, today there are 10 drugs in the global development pipeline. Noting the sea of change, Wednesday’s Open Forum conference focus shifted from developing drugs to speeding them through development and to the patients that need them.
Viewpoint: We Need New TB Drugs – Part Two
Last week, Dr. Kaiser shared his thoughts and perspectives as a medical doctor on the current state of TB drug regimens. This week he shares specific ideas on how TB drug R&D could be improved.
Viewpoint: We Need New TB Drugs – Part One
Antibiotics are, to the typical patient, always the quick fix. Despite our best attempts to convince them that their viral bronchitis will get better without that course of amoxicillin, anyone who has worked a primary care clinic knows the pressure to throw antibiotics at the problem, even when we ourselves know it’s not the answer, because our patients perceive it as the fast track to health. A couple weeks, they reason, and the infection is over. Normalcy ought to resume. Then you tell them they have tuberculosis, and “normalcy” is at least six months away, if everything goes according to plan. And tuberculosis is a wily enough contender to make sure everything won’t.
This Week in TB R&D – July 20, 2010
On Friday, July 16th, the fourth annual New England TB Symposium took place at the Broad Institute, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The symposium was in collaboration with the US-Japan Cooperative Medical Sciences Program: 45th Tuberculosis and Leprosy Research Conference which preceded the symposium at the Broad from July 13-15th.
A brief synopsis of some of the symposium [...]
TB on the Agenda at the World Cup
Tuberculosis is on the agenda at the Football for Hope Festival 2010 – an official event of the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa – which opened Sunday in Johannesburg. The week-long event celebrates the power of football for social change, with 32 teams of young people from disadvantaged communities around the world gathering for a festival of football, culture, education and entertainment.
The War on Tuberculosis – DOTS in Newark, NJ
Haile Meskel emerges from his Newark, New Jersey, row house and slips into the passenger seat of a shiny, late-model sedan, where a woman waits for him, a tiny white envelope and bottled water at the ready. He swallows a handful of pills as the woman watches. Within a couple of minutes the transaction is over. To the casual observer, this might look like one of the many furtive, illegal transactions that take place in this city every day—but it’s no drug deal. This is an example of directly observed therapy (DOT), which many public health and infectious disease experts believe is the single best method of treating people infected with tuberculosis and controlling the spread of multidrug-resistant and extensively drug-resistant strains in the United States and around the world.
Future of Olive View TB Ward in Doubt
Los Angeles County is spending more than $16 million to build a dedicated tuberculosis ward that also could serve as a treatment center to isolate victims of a bioterrorism attack. But something’s missing: people to staff it.
NY Times Article on Sanatoriums
The last of the nation’s original tuberculosis sanitariums sits, improbably, just off Interstate 95, near a Dunkin’ Donuts and a Motel 6, and just behind fields of children playing soccer. The fading signs out front simply say A.G. Holley State Hospital. There is nothing to suggest that one of history’s greatest killers lurks inside.
This Week in TB R&D – 15 June 2010
On Friday, June 11th, the Johns Hopkins University Center for Tuberculosis Research hosted their annual scientific meeting and the WGND was there to cover the event. Approximately 100-200 people were present including persons from NIH and small pharmaceutical companies. This annual meeting is an opportunity for the epidemiological, clinical and basic researchers to relate their [...]
TB Researcher William Bishai Named to Head New TB-HIV Institute at Mandela School of Medicine in Durban, South Africa
DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA (May 26, 2010) – The University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute today announced the appointment of William R. Bishai, M.D., Ph.D., as the first permanent director of the KwaZulu-Natal Research Institute for Tuberculosis and HIV (K-RITH).
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Toppix TB News- Isoniazid resistance and death in patients with tuberculous meningitis: retrospective cohort study. 8 Sep 2010
- Global Fund needs U.S. support 8 Sep 2010
- New park memorializes ORC 7 Sep 2010
- Experimental TB test called fast, accurate 7 Sep 2010
- People with diabetes up to 2-3 times higher risk of TB 7 Sep 2010
