Speeding tuberculosis drug development

A new drug-discovery assay that uses weakened bacteria could speed the development of antibiotics to treat tuberculosis (TB). TB is a global health concern that kills 1.6 million people per year, according to the World Health Organization. The antibiotics used to treat the disease often need to be taken for months and can be toxic. And the bacteria that cause the disease, Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), have developed resistance to many of the antibiotics in use. “There have actually been a few cases reported of TB that are resistant to essentially everything that is out there,” says Deborah Hung, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard researcher behind the development of the assay. In terms of drug development, she says, “new TB drugs have actually been one of the biggest pharmaceutical gaps.” To develop the assay, her team created dozens of strains of Mtb, each with a genetic modification that tamps