Measurement of the Intracellular Mycobacterium tuberculosis Drug Effect and Prediction of the Clinical Dose-Response Relationship Using Intracellular Pharmacodynamic Modeling (PD<sub>i</sub>)

The human disease tuberculosis (TB) is the leading cause of death from a single infectious agent. A quarter of the world's population is estimated to be latently infected. Drug development and screening is slow and costly. We have developed a physiologically relevant assay to screen drugs against TB when inside immune cells. This chapter will describe a newly developed preclinical drug screening assay for TB, using high-content imaging and pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic modeling.