How is this Initiative different from other organizations like the Novartis Institute for Tropical Diseases and the Global TB Alliance?
The Initiative is focused on early-stage TB drug discovery with emphases on the application of synthetic and medicinal chemistry and the screening of large numbers of well-characterized compounds. Its most important goal is to fill the pipeline with new clinical candidates for future drug development. This public-private organization has unique access to proprietary libraries of compounds. The Initiative operates as a sort of Mission Control, coordinating dedicated researchers and investigators globally in a methodic, geographic search for molecules, compounds and targets ready to be explored. They come from government, academia, not-for-profit organizations and the pharmaceutical industry to create a truly “industrial strength” team. This kind of rigorous search will put us on the radar of even more companies and universities with compounds, targets or libraries that we might not know about yet.
