Agreement with Chinese Researchers Opens Doors to Discovery of Better and Faster TB Therapies
Beijing and New York (January 31, 2007) — The Institute of Materia Medica (IMM), a member of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, and the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development (TB Alliance), a not-for-profit, product development partnership accelerating the discovery and development of new TB drugs, today announced plans to pursue a joint research partnership to develop promising, novel anti-tuberculosis agents.
The TB Alliance and IMM will work together on the design, synthesis and evaluation of a class of compounds known as riminophenazines. The class was discovered in the 1950s and developed to work against tuberculosis, but has not been used for TB due to some side effects. Because researchers see potential in the class, the goal of the research partnership is to deliver novel compounds from the riminophenazine class — without the side effects — that could improve TB treatment. The collaboration will utilize IMM’s expertise and integrated capabilities in chemistry, pharmacology and manufacture along with the TB Alliance’s research experience.
“Developing faster and better TB drugs is literally a matter of life and death, and this partnership is an important step forward,” said Dr. Maria C. Freire, CEO and President of the TB Alliance. “By bringing together the best science in China with the TB Alliance’s expertise and commitment to affordability and access, we are helping to advance and expand the TB drug pipeline.”
The TB Alliance is leading the development of the first, most comprehensive portfolio of TB drugs in decades, and is accelerating discovery, preclinical and clinical research of known and novel classes of antibiotics to shorten and simplify the treatment of tuberculosis. The Alliance is committed to making all drugs developed by its research partnerships affordable, accessible to all who need them, and universally adopted.
“This historic agreement between IMM and the TB Alliance offers hope for scientific advances in the development of critically-needed new TB drugs,” said Dr. Xiao-Liang Wang, Director of the Institute Materia Medica. “In China we know how important it is to develop and deliver novel TB drugs that work more quickly and can help prevent the problems that today’s drugs have with compliance, drug resistance and TB-HIV co-infection.”
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