What are the key questions in basic research for NTM?
Key questions in NTM research include the areas of epidemiology, environment, growth and survival, virulence, and unique drug targets. These elements are the critical ones that need to be understood if we are to have insight into who gets infected, how infection occurs, the role of those infections in disease, the ability to identify those infections over time, and the ability to treat those infections. Without adequate basic research, we will spend the next 50 years wondering why thinking of NTM as a cousin to TB is not as effective as it could be. Just as treating one NTM patient identically to his or her sister is liable to be unsuccessful, treating NTM infection as if it is simply a close relative to TB will have the same pitfalls. What is applied (or translational) research and what does it mean in relation to NTM infection? Applied research is performed to answer specific, practical questions. It uses basic scientific information to find ways to improve our approaches to problems
