[Source: C-Path] – Ahead of World TB Day, US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret Hamburg helped public and private sector partners launch a new collaboration to significantly accelerate the development of combination treatments for tuberculosis—and replace an almost 50-year-old drug regimen. Created by the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development, the Critical Path Institute, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the initiative could potentially reduce the time it takes to introduce new combination TB treatments from as much as a quarter century to as few as six years.
Known as the Critical Path to TB Drug Regimens (CPTR), the initiative will test promising combinations of individual TB drug candidates from different companies early in the development pipeline—and identify the best new treatment regimens. Initial groups engaged in CPTR include scientists from FDA and the pharmaceutical companies Johnson & Johnson, sanofi-aventis, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Bayer, Otsuka, Novartis, Sequella and Anacor Pharmaceuticals, Inc. The World Health Organization (WHO) has expressed its support for the initiative.
For more information: Global Partners Join Forces to Speed Development of New TB Drug Combinations