Race heats up for first-to-market drugs for resistant tuberculosis

In early July, Janssen Research and Development, part of the New Jersey drug giant Johnson & Johnson, announced that it had requested US approval of a new compound called bedaquiline to treat multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB). If approved by the country's Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the medication would be the first tuberculosis drug with a new mechanism of action in four decades, as well as the only drug specifically indicated for MDR-TB, which roughly 650,000 people are living with worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.