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New Era of TB Drug Discovery and Its Impact on Disease Management

  • Mycobacterial Infections (H Bach, Section Editor)
  • Published:
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Opinion statement

Tuberculosis (TB) is a devastating infectious disease that continues to plague the world, despite improved hygiene, massive vaccination efforts and an arsenal of chemotherapeutic agents. Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), the causative agent of TB, is a slow-growing bacterium that naturally resists most currently known antibiotics. Emergences of ever-increasing drug-resistant Mtb strains threaten our ability to control the disease. Unfortunately, lethargic drug development efforts led to the approval of only one new TB drug in the last 50 years by the US Food and Drug Administration. This dismal progress warrants a re-evaluation of approaches and methods for new TB drug discovery. Although successful in the past, the continuous use of in vitro drug discovery methods eroded recent attempts towards TB drug discovery, caused by a pathogen that inhabits human cells. Advances in recent years include the development of new intracellular screening protocols using relevant disease models. Pilot studies have yielded new lead compounds filling the pipeline for further development. Furthermore, these studies have revealed new insights to forecast changes in diagnostics and chemotherapies against this notorious infectious agent.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medicine, University of British Columbia, 2660 Oak Street, Room 344A, Vancouver, BC, V6H 3Z6, Canada

    Xingji Zheng MSc

  2. Department of Medicine, University of British Columbia, 2660 Oak Street, Room 350, Vancouver, BC, V6H 3Z6, Canada

    Yossef Av-Gay PhD

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  1. Xingji Zheng MSc
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Correspondence to Yossef Av-Gay PhD.

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Xingji Zheng declares that he has no conflict of interest. Yossef Av-Gay declares that he has no conflict of interest.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Mycobacterial Infections

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Zheng, X., Av-Gay, Y. New Era of TB Drug Discovery and Its Impact on Disease Management. Curr Treat Options Infect Dis 8, 299–310 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40506-016-0098-0

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