At Tufts University School of Medicine, Shumin Tan is investigating the human-microbe relationship to advance not just an understanding of tuberculosis, but any infection.

Imagine you have 20 new compounds that have shown some effectiveness in treating a disease like tuberculosis (TB), which affects 10 million people worldwide and kills 1.5 million each year. You know that to treat the disease effectively, patients will need a combination of three or four drugs because TB bacteria behave differently in different environments—and in some cases, evolve to become drug-resistant.

Technology combines rapid imaging and machine learning to uncover patterns in how antibacterials kill; can be applied to many pathogens

New study identifies differences between subpopulations of mycobacteria with variable antibiotic susceptibilities