New anti-tuberculosis therapies

Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the most important global health problems in today's world. Poverty, inadequate health services, drug resistance and HIV/AIDS epidemic has hampered TB control, mostly in the developing nations, despite the worldwide availability of rifampicin-containing regimens with high anti mycobacteria I efficacy. Pharmaceutical companies have neglected the development of new anti-TB drugs in the last decades due to a lack of market incentives, while the public sector held only a meagre interest on TB control. However, novel initiatives, especially those merging in the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development, a public-private non-profit organisation backed by the World Health Organization, and a renewed interest in the research on Mycobacterium tuberculosis, have changed the TB pipeline in the last few years. At present, an unexpected number of new compounds are being developed in order to launch shorter and more efficient anti-TB therapies. This is the most active pipeline for TB drug development in known history.