Tuberculosis Drug Discovery

Current Drugs for TB

Though there are drugs available to treat TB infection, the current treatment is a lengthy process, involving a 4-drug regimen to be taken daily for 2 months followed by a 2-drug regimen for another 4 to 6 months. The cost of such treatment makes it extremely difficult to reach all who are infected, leaving the poorest of nations to struggle with high infection rates. In such regions, dosing regimens are often inadequately administered and combined with the length and complexity of treatment this has led to a rise in the number of cases of drug-resistant TB.

No truly novel anti-tubercular drug has been developed for use in over 40 years. With the emergence of multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB) and extremely drug resistant TB (XDR-TB), it has become clear that new drugs are of the utmost importance to preventing the spread of these lethal strains.

IDRI’s Drug Discovery Program

IDRI's long-term goal is to aid in the discovery and development of new drugs that can greatly shorten the amount of time it takes to treat TB. IDRI has brought together a critical mass of capabilities and expertise that will enable the discovery of new compounds to treat tuberculosis.

IDRI has partnered with Eli Lilly and the NIH to form the Lilly TB Drug Discovery Initiative. This unique public-private partnership accelerate early-stage drug discovery by bringing together specialists from around the world for the systematic exploration of vast, private molecular libraries in search of new TB treatments. 

The 3 components of IDRI’s TB Drug Discovery Program are:

Target discovery and whole cell assays
High throughput screening 
Medicinal chemistry

The Lilly TB Drug Discovery Initiative’s projects conducted at IDRI are mainly focused on high throughput screening and medicinal chemistry.  

Staff

Director
Tanya Parish

Senior Scientific Staff
Allen Casey
Stephanie Florio
Ed Kesicki 
Joshua Odingo
David Roberts

Post-Doctoral Scientists
Aaron Korkegian
Juliane Ollinger
Theresa O’Malley Harris

Research Assistants
James Ahn
Torey Alling
Mai Bailey