An international study aimed at identifying new treatment regimens that could shorten the length of TB treatment from six to three months has started in Tanzania and South Africa.
The so-called multi-arm-multi-stage -TB (MAMS-TB) trial uses a combination of established drugs and novel drugs and is funded by the European Developing Country Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP) through the Pan African Consortium for the Evaluation of Anti-tuberculosis agents or PanACEA consortium.
The MAMS design enables regimens with unsatisfactory outcomes to be dropped rapidly. It allows the researchers to test multiple potential treatments quickly to select the best regiment to be used in a trial that would allow a new treatment to be approved by licensing authorities.
“The MAMS-TB trial is a unique opportunity to develop a novel TB treatment rapidly that will substantially shorten treatment,” said the Chief Investigator Martin Boeree from the University of Nijmegen.
Michael Hoelscher from Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich, who represents the University that sponsors the study, said “in the MAMS-TB study we are developing better methods to treat TB for the most disadvantaged in the world community”.
Stephen Gillespie from the University of St Andrews noted that this new development has only been able to occur because of the work of our many collaborators in Africa and the work that the consortium has been doing to develop capacity to test new regimens in an African setting.
One of the principal investigators, Lilian Tina Minja, of the Ifakara Health Institute (IHI), said the PanACEA consortium is an excellent example for bilateral and dynamic collaborations between Southern and Northern partners in TB drug development and evaluation.
According to Dr Klaus Reither, a leading TB researcher from IHI, the PanACEA MAMS study at Mwananyamala is the largest TB drug trial to involve the institute.
Another principal iInvestigator, Gibson Kibiki, is excited to see the start of this trial, which is innovative in terms of design, collaboration and the use of a complete electronic source system.
A principal investigator from the National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR), Mbeya Centre, Nyanda Ntinginya, is delighted to see that Tanzania together with South Africa is taking a leading role in the global effort to control TB.
There are nearly eight million new TB cases a year and more than a million deaths. Conventional market solutions to TB drug development are not expected to provide a solution.
The PanACEA consortium has been able to develop capacity of African centres to tackle TB through building infrastructure and supporting the professional development of African and European scientists. There are 11 collaborating centres in sub-Saharan Africa and a growing group of European collaborators.
Source: IPP Media