Tuberculosis Drug Discovery UK

TBD-UK is the UK's response towards the global effort to find new TB drugs.

Tuberculosis kills over 2 million every year, kills every 20 seconds, infects 1/3 of the world's population and it has not been eradicated.

Tuberculosis Is a debilitating disease. It attacks lungs but it also cause much more severe complex symptoms. It affects the poor, the weak and co-exists with HIV/AIDS sufferers. 1/3 of all AIDS deaths are caused by TB.

Tuberculosis is caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis. TB drugs work by killing this type of bacteria. This is not easy and makes treatment long and difficult. It takes 6-9 months to treat TB and now the drugs are beginning to be ineffective due to resistance.

We know more about TB now than we ever have done in the past! Genetic information tells us what makes-up M. tuberculosis. We can use this information to help us design new drugs.

Biochemical knowledge now tells us where we need to look and we can use this to help design new drugs.

Medicinal chemists design and build many drug compounds. Biochemists and microbiologists assess the compounds. More compounds are made and tested again and again and again.......

From the bench to the clinic..... New compounds from the laboratory are still a long way from the clinic. They require years of rigorous safety and efficacy assessment in animals and in clinical trials. This takes many years, is very expensive and sadly has a high rate of failure.

The new drugs we discover must be safe, must reduce treatment time, should treat multiple resistant (MDR) TB, should be compatible with HIV drugs, should treat pediatric TB disease and need to be affordable. They are urgently needed!

Welcome to our website

We are an organisation comprising of UK scientists involved in the discovery and development of new tuberculosis drugs.

Our objective is to utilise our knowledge and facilities in order to advance the UK's contribution to the discovery of new medicines to eradicate tuberculosis.

We hope that you enjoy browsing our website and we would welcome any comments or ideas you have, which you can submit by using the contact us button. Alternatively you can follow us on Twitter.

News Flash

Professor Stephen Gillespie appointed as the Sir James Black Chair of Medicine at the University of St Andrews.

Check out the Latest News page for further details.

Dr Geoff Coxon webmaster