Lilly: Drug-Resistant TB Demands More R&D

Today's guest blog comes from Lilly's vice president of Global Health Programs, Evan Lee, M.D. 

A new article published by a team from the World Health Organization in the European Respiratory Journal shows that while we’re seeing gradual expansion in care for multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB), there continues to be an urgent need to accelerate the scale up of diagnosis and treatment efforts in heavily affected countries. 

The article covers a lot of ground, but the messages on treatment resonated with me for a couple of reasons. First of all, TB is a treatable disease and a vaccine is still a ways off. So access to effective treatment is the ultimate measure of progress. And while we’ve recently welcomed the market availability of two new MDR-TB drugs, both are still continuing to be studied in clinical trials, and the companies are working with health officials to determine the best way to provide access to people living with MDR-TB. These medicines have been developed in an era of strict regulatory requirements that weren’t in place at the time the existing treatments were developed. 

Read on for more about recent developments in discovering and developing more treatment options for MDR-TB.