The First New Tuberculosis Drug in Decades: Promise and Challenges
It is estimated that up to one-third of the world’s population—over two billion people—are infected with TB, and each one of
them is a potential future case of TB disease. According to the WHO Global Tuberculosis Control Report 2010, TB remains the leading killer of people with HIV, accounting for at least a quarter of all HIV deaths in 2009. Despite being curable, TB claimed 4,700 lives each day—or the lives of 1.7 million people that same year.
After nearly 50 years, there is finally something to get excited about in tuberculosis (TB) drug development. Tibotec’s TMC207—the first compound from a novel class of TB drugs, the diarylquinolines—will likely be submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency for accelerated or conditional approval sometime in 2012.
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