Following gargantuan global efforts against COVID-19, tuberculosis (TB) is once again the world's biggest infectious killer, a top expert has told AFP, lamenting the lack of focus on rooting out TB.

Advocates demand that the Indian government take urgent action to ensure that every eligible person with TB has access to evidence-based, short-course treatment regimens.

On 28 October 2022, the 1/4/6x24 Campaign Coalition will host a session at the USAID TB Symposium '1/4/6x24 Campaign Call to Action: Kick Starting Momentum Toward the HLM.'

TB diagnosis usually starts with asking someone whether they have any of the classic symptoms of TB (coughing, fever, loss of weight, and drenching night sweats in adults). Traditionally, only people who have one or more of these symptoms are offered confirmatory molecular tests.

The Stop TB Partnership announced the successful grantees under the Round 11 of the Challenge Facility for Civil Society 2022, which will support 100 TB affected communities and civil society organizations from 29 countries and seven regions for a total of US$ 10.5 million.

18 October 2022, Geneva |The political declaration of the 2018 United Nations High Level Meeting on tuberculosis (TB) includes commitments by member states to “ensuring strong and meaningful engagement of civil society and affected communities in the planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the tuberculosis response, within and beyond the health sector”. The 2020 UN Secretary-General progress report on TB includes priority recommendations to accelerate the TB response and reach targets through meaningful engagement of civil society and affected communities in the TB response. In view of the major developments in global public health, WHO is updating its guidance on community and civil society engagement to end TB.

RAHWAY, N.J., and Cambridge M.A., October 18, 2022 – Merck, (NYSE: MRK), known as MSD outside of the United States and Canada, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute (Gates MRI) today announced a licensing agreement for two preclinical antibacterial candidates for evaluation as potential components of combination regimens for the treatment of tuberculosis (TB). These candidates were discovered by Merck scientists as part of the TB Drug Accelerator (TBDA). The TBDA is a collaboration established among biopharmaceutical companies, research organizations and universities to accelerate the discovery and development of novel therapeutic candidates against TB. The initiative was established with support and leadership from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

HAMILTON, ON, Oct. 18, 2022 - Adapsyn Bioscience Inc., a chemical bioinformatics company that discovers novel drug-like small molecules, today announced that it has received funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to find novel therapeutics that target tuberculosis (TB). Globally, TB remains a leading cause of death from infectious disease, and factors such as a growing resistance to current drug therapies have created an urgent need for new treatments to combat its spread. Adapsyn's discovery platform integrates artificial intelligence and machine learning to identify and isolate novel drug-like metabolites from microbes for downstream evaluation and development. Adapsyn will utilize the full capabilities of its platform to identify novel small molecules that inhibit established and emerging targets in Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of the disease, which will help fuel the development of next-generation anti-TB drugs. The company will collaborate with leaders in TB research on target selection, bioactivity testing, and target confirmation.

SAN DIEGO, Oct. 18, 2022 -- Illumina Inc. (NASDAQ: ILMN), a global leader in DNA sequencing and array-based technologies, and GenoScreen, an innovative genomics company, today announced a partnership to accelerate progress to end tuberculosis (TB) worldwide. The partnership will expand capabilities for countries most impacted by tuberculosis to more effectively detect and combat multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB). This alliance will enable global access to a package combining Illumina sequencing products and the GenoScreen Deeplex^® Myc-TB assay, a targeted next-generation sequencing (NGS) based test for rapid and extensive detection of anti-TB drug resistance, to promptly inform treatment decision. This will help advance the World Health Organization's (WHO) strategy to end the global TB epidemic by 2035.

Human tuberculosis is second only to Covid as the world’s most fatal infectious disease; although treatable, there remains a global unmet need to diagnose the disease at an earlier stage and to identify carriers that may develop the disease. To address these objectives, PBD Biotech has developed a rapid screening blood test that shows promise for identifying people with the disease as well as a subgroup with pre-clinical infection at higher risk of developing the disease, offering the potential to revolutionise management of TB. The company has raised follow-on funding of £2.4M to support further clinical trials.