Scientists Bring TB Treatment Into The 21st Century, Scotland

Main Category: Tuberculosis
Article Date: 21 Jun 2009 - 0:00 PDT

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A blueprint for a much-needed new generation of tuberculosis (TB) treatment has been developed by a team of scientists led at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow.

TB was once thought to have been eradicated but has become a major killer again in recent years, claiming two million lives annually - or one every fifteen seconds - and infecting about a third of the world's population.

One of the main causes of the resurgence is a lengthy and ineffective chemotherapy process which still relies on drugs developed in the mid-20th century.

Researchers at Strathclyde, together with partners at University College London and the University of Birmingham, have remoulded an existing antibiotic into a form which could be developed for new drugs which can tackle resistant forms of TB and reduce the time which treatment takes.

Dr Geoff Coxon, of the Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences, who led the newly-published research, said: "TB is a very complex disease. It's not only deadly in itself but is closely linked with HIV/AIDS. It's also very difficult to detect and treat.

"Globally, more than eight million people develop active TB every year and if trends continue, there will be a total of 36 million TB-related deaths by 2020 - yet the drugs used to treat the disease were developed in the 1950s. All of this highlights the urgent need for new, more effective drugs to treat it. Our research has found a promising scaffold for a new class of drugs to deal with this severe health problem."

Dr Coxon and his fellow researchers created the new template by modifying a naturally-occurring antibiotic called thiolactomycin (TLM), to generate compounds which can mimic the way in which it acts. They found these acted well against Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacteria which causes TB infections, and an enzyme which is targeted by TLM which helps the bacteria grow.

The research represents the first time a new class of anti-TB agent has been discovered solely by a UK-based academic collaboration. It is also the first major breakthrough for Tuberculosis Drug Discovery UK (TBD-UK), a nationwide consortium of scientists specialising in the development of new medicines to treat TB. The group has been established with the aim of improving the co-ordination of TB drug discovery research and raising awareness of its importance.

Dr Coxon, who is TBD-UK's deputy leader and director of medicinal chemistry, said: "TB research in the UK has been quite disparate for several decades, so TBD-UK is bringing together scientists to make better use of our combined skills and speed up research towards finding TB new drugs.

"These new drugs must also be inexpensive and compatible with HIV/ AIDS anti-retrovirals. The vast majority of TB cases are in countries where most people can't afford the drugs and where HIV/AIDS is widespread, so our work is more important than ever."

The team consisted of researchers from the Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences, Strathclyde Innovations in Drug Research, University College London's Department of Infection and the University of Birmingham's School of Biosciences. The research has been published in science journal PLoS ONE. The full article can be seen here.

Source
The Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences