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MSF's Suerie Moon spoke in front of a US Senate Committee on promoting new treatments & cures for neglected diseases read more

 

NEW: The 13th Edition of Untangling the Web of Antiretroviral Price Reductions is now available download it here

 

VIDEO: MSF's community approach to treating malnutrition in Niger watch it here

 

WHO's work on the financing of medical research and development is given a fresh start read more

 

MSF Letter to GFATM on concerns over scale-up of AIDS treatment in light of Board of Directors Meeting read more

 

New European Parliament Working Group on Innovation & Access launches with support of Access Campaign  read more

 





TB Drug and Diagnostics Development

Where are the drugs and diagnostics to tackle this global health crisis?
Virtually no research into TB drugs has been carried out since the 1960s. Once the disease was effectively eradicated in wealthy countries, pharmaceutical companies lost interest in developing new products. With no market incentive in developing drugs for people in poorer countries unable to afford their high prices, research activity slowed to a standstill.

Mapping the gaps in research and development
In order to focus attention on the desperate lack of medical tools to tackle TB, MSF produced an analysis of research currently underway into drugs and diagnostics for TB, highlighting the gaps where work needs to be done.
 
After 40 years of inactivity, new compounds are now under investigation. But there are still far too few candidates that are likely to make it through to the final stage.  The advances made in basic scientific knowledge of the bacterium that causes TB are only very slowly being translated into drugs necessary to revolutionise TB treatment and curb the epidemic. A parallel report examining current diagnostics research revealed even fewer promising developments suited to the settings where we work.

Read more

MSF's analysis of TB drug development pipeline 

MSF's analysis of TB diagnostics pipeline 

MSF’s efforts to speed up development of new tools