The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA) held its 26th assembly this week and elected its new president. He presented the future orientation of the industry group, saying will work on trust-building and needs predictability in the regulatory process, policies that sustain and encourage innovation, and a strong intellectual property system, he said.

Researchers from the Radboud UMC have conducted the first study globally to show that intensified antibiotic treatment can improve the prognosis of patients with tuberculous (TB) meningitis, the most severe form of TB which carries a mortality of up to 50%. Their results are published in the highest-ranking infectious disease journal, Lancet Infectious Diseases.

With nearly nine million new cases and 1.5 million deaths per year, tuberculosis is a major global health threat, apart from entailing significant financial and economic burdens. The increase and spread of drug resistant TB makes the problem even more dangerous. The only currently available vaccine, BCG, offers limited protection and is not effective enough to stop the TB epidemic. New safer and more effective vaccines are therefore urgently needed.

The Trudeau Institute has announced that it is the recipient of a $229,865 grant to support tuberculosis research from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Health Program. Trudeau faculty member Dr. Andrea Cooper was awarded the grant for her work using mouse models to develop an improved tuberculosis vaccine. The Gates Foundation is a major funding source for tuberculosis research, and its grants process is highly competitive.

NEW YORK (Nov. 1, 2012) — Weill Cornell Medical College announced today that it is a Grand Challenges Explorations winner, an initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Researchers at Weill Cornell have been awarded three research grants totaling more than $1.5 million. Weill Cornell's Dr. Juan R. Cubillos-Ruiz, a postdoctoral research associate in medicine in the laboratory of Dean Dr. Laurie H. Glimcher, will pursue an innovative global health and development research project titled, "Tailored Nanodevices to Understand Resistance Against HIV," Dr. Carl Nathan, chairman of microbiology and immunology and R.A. Rees Pritchett Professor of Microbiology, will investigate "Sequestration and asymmetric distribution of irreversibly oxidized proteins in Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb)" and Dr. Kyu Rhee, associate professor of medicine and microbiology and immunology, will examine "Mining metabolosomes: A biochemical blueprint to new drug targets against non-replicating Mtb."

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Mass spectrometry shows scientists how antibiotics function inside living bacteria, new insight may improve use of old drugs and accelerate development of smarter antibiotics to fight TB

The University of Queensland has received over $3million to boost tuberculosis research from the TB Sailors', Soldiers' & Airmen's Association of Queensland (TB Association), this week.

A rise in multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR TB) is a threat to the country's people and health system, the SA Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) said on Friday.

Despite considerable investments in research and development (R&D) and the availability of powerful scientific and technological tools, innovation in the pharmaceutical industry has declined drastically in the last decade. In addition, most of the new molecules introduced into the market do not entail genuine therapeutic innovations or target the diseases that prevail in developing countries. Most importantly, the prices charged for new pharmaceutical products are unaffordable to the poor and, increasingly, to patients and social security systems, even in developed countries.