Institute of Materia Medica and TB Alliance partner to tackle tuberculosis

Jan 31 2007

The Institute of Materia Medica (IMM), a member of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, and the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development (TB Alliance), a not-for-profit, product development partnership accelerating the discovery and development of new TB drugs, today announced plans to pursue a joint research partnership to develop promising, novel anti-tuberculosis agents.

The TB Alliance and IMM will work together on the design, synthesis and evaluation of a class of compounds known as riminophenazines. The class was discovered in the 1950s and developed to work against tuberculosis, but has not been used for TB due to some side effects. Because researchers see potential in the class, the goal of the research partnership is to deliver novel compounds from the riminophenazine class -- without the side effects -- that could improve TB treatment. The collaboration will utilize IMM's expertise and integrated capabilities in chemistry, pharmacology and manufacture along with the TB Alliance's research experience.

"Developing faster and better TB drugs is literally a matter of life and death, and this partnership is an important step forward," said Dr. Maria C. Freire, CEO and President of the TB Alliance. "By bringing together the best science in China with the TB Alliance's expertise and commitment to affordability and access, we are helping to advance and expand the TB drug pipeline."

The TB Alliance is leading the development of the first, most comprehensive portfolio of TB drugs in decades, and is accelerating discovery, preclinical and clinical research of known and novel classes of antibiotics to shorten and simplify the treatment of tuberculosis. The Alliance is committed to making all drugs developed by its research partnerships affordable, accessible to all who need them, and universally adopted.

"This historic agreement between IMM and the TB Alliance offers hope for scientific advances in the development of critically-needed new TB drugs," said Dr. Xiao-Liang Wang, Director of the Institute Materia Medica. "In China we know how important it is to develop and deliver novel TB drugs that work more quickly and can help prevent the problems that today's drugs have with compliance, drug resistance and TB-HIV co-infection."

The last class of TB drugs was developed and approved in the 1960s, and the lengthy treatment (6-9 months) required by the old drugs is hindering the progress of TB control. Public health experts agree that a faster-acting TB cure would improve compliance, lower relapse rates, reduce the growth of drug resistant TB, reduce health care costs and save millions of lives. Novel new TB drugs also are needed to be compatible with antiretroviral drugs used to treat HIV for the rising number of those co-infected with TB and HIV, as well as to work against the deadly climb in drug resistant TB. The TB Alliance's ultimate goal is to develop a shorter regimen with novel drugs which could be effective in as few as 10 doses, much like other antibiotics.