ScienceScope
A South Korean research institute has been selected to help produce a faster cure for tuberculosis (TB). The nonprofit Global Alliance for TB Drug Development this week announced that it will sponsor a 2-year project at the Korean Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT) in Taejon to develop drugs that act faster than current TB treatments, which can take up to 9 months to complete. TB currently infects about a third of the world's population and kills 2 million people annually.
The project will target a class of drugs called quinolones, which aren't part of the current standard treatment for Mycobacterium tuberculosis but are often enlisted when that regimen fails. By tinkering with existing quinolones, scientists hope to produce new compounds that could work as first-line drugs. KRICT is "a fantastic research institute" with a lot of expertise in quinolone synthesis, says TB researcher Clifton Barry of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland, an alliance adviser. The TB alliance is funding the Korean team to synthesize several hundred new compounds, which will be screened in test tubes and animal models at Yonsei University in Seoul. The group declined to say how much the effort will cost.