The TB Alliance first call for proposals, issued in November 2000, had a December 2000 deadline and yielded 103 letters of interest from various organizations worldwide, including public research institutions, private laboratories, and academic research groups. A significant number of these proposals came from developing countries with a high burden of TB, and many of them North-South partnerships.
Of these, the TB Alliance’s Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) selected 21 projects for further review, including 7 discovery projects, 7 pre-clinical projects, and 7 clinical projects.