The Working Group on TB Drug Development (WG) held its annual meeting in Paris on October 30, 2003 at La Maison de L’Amerique Latine. Chaired by the WG Secretary, Dr. Rick O’Brien, the meeting provided participants with updates on TB drug development activities and a business review of the Stop TB Coordinating Board and Working Group pursuits.
The full presentations from the scientific update portion of the meeting reviewed progress and challenges in three areas of drug development: drug discovery, compound screening and clinical trials. These presentations are described below and can be downloaded here:
Dr. Ken Duncan of GlaxoSmithKline outlined the discovery phase of TB Drug Development, highlighting the need for continued progress in the areas of target identification, target validation and lead identification.
Dr. Barbara Laughon of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases/National Institutes of Health provided insight into preclinical studies of new TB drugs.
Dr. Rick O’Brien of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reviewed the current activities in the clinical trials phase of TB Drug Development.
The review of WG business activities was outlined in the following presentations:
Dr. Maria C. Freire, CEO of the TB Alliance and WG Chair, reviewed activities of the last year, and highlighted results of the mapping exercise of projects and compounds submitted by WG members.
Dr. Phil Hopewell of the Stop TB Partnership stressed the importance of the “new tools” working groups within the Stop TB Partnership, and introduced Dr. Sarah England, who will take over from Dr. Hopewell in 2004. Dr. England can be reached at englands@who.int.