Tuberculosis (TB) is a bacterial disease that kills around 2 million people every year. Two billion people – that’s just shy of a third of the world’s population – are infected with the bacterial disease. With the fastest growing incidence of Tuberculosis occurring in South East Asia, it’s no wonder that Australasia’s largest Tuberculosis research facility, the Centenary Institute, is pushing to make leaps and bounds in the treatment of contagious disease.
Today is World TB Day and what better news than to announce that researches at Sydney’s Centenary Institute have made a discovery that could possibly lead to a new drug to combat Tuberculosis. Dr Nick West, Associate Faculty of the Mycobacterial group at Centenary, explained the following about the disease: “Unfortunately, the antibiotics we use to fight TB aren’t effective against latent TB and can only be used when the disease becomes active. This is a major problem as 1 out of 10 people who have latent TB will develop the active disease, becoming sick and contagious.”
Dr West’s team have made a crucial discovery for the precursor of a new drug that could ultimately cure Tuberculosis during the latent stage. If the discovery is able to be converted into a drug that can treat TB, it will be the first new treatment for the bacterial disease since 1962.
Dr West explained, “We have investigated a protein that is essential for TB to survive and we have had some success in developing a drug that will inhibit this protein. Our goal over the coming months is to find out the full extent of this drug’s potential … If we can figure out a way to treat TB when it’s in a latent stage, then we could save millions of lives throughout the world.”
You can find more information at the Centenary Institute website.
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