LIFT-TB Partners Join TB Alliance in Advancing the Treatment of Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis on World TB Day
The world continues to battle against two pandemics: COVID-19 and tuberculosis (TB). Today, March 24, marks World TB Day and LIFT-TB (Leveraging Innovation for Faster Treatment of TB) is joining TB Alliance and partners around the globe to raise awareness and continue shining a light on one of the world’s oldest diseases. TB had long been the deadliest infectious disease—until COVID-19. This new pandemic has shown that new tools, diagnostics, drugs, and vaccines can be developed with the right amount of funding and political will. The same resources are needed to bring the TB pandemic under control and make progress toward a TB-free world.
LIFT-TB partners are generating scientific evidence through operational research programs of new TB therapies, and to accelerate global accessibility of new treatments. Highlights in these efforts include:
The LIFT-TB initiative continues to broaden and accelerate the adoption and scale up of the BPaL regimen for highly drug-resistant forms of TB.
Patients are actively being treated in six of the seven LIFT-TB countries and 563 healthcare professionals have been trained. Submissions for regulatory approval of pretomanid have been completed in all countries, with two approvals to date (Ukraine and Uzbekistan).
LIFT-TB is supported by Korea International Cooperation Agency, through the Global Disease Eradication Fund (GDEF), and TB Alliance, a non-profit organization working to advance the development of new TB compounds and medicines, with a goal to develop a short, simple, and affordable TB regimen suitable for all people with TB. TB Alliance works closely with partners and researchers to advance both early- and late-stage research.
Though many important advances have been made in recent years, the need to invest in TB research and development is even more apparent amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, which has already reversed hard-won progress against TB. In 2020, the world saw the first increase in TB deaths since 2005, and a 15 percent reduction in the number of people treated for drug-resistant TB.
LIFT-TB PARTNERS
Recent Updates on the BPaL Regimen
TB Alliance’s ZeNix trial of the BPaL regimen (bedaquiline, pretomanid, and linezolid) in South Africa and Eastern Europe sought to optimize a six-month, all-oral treatment regimen by assessing various dosing modifications of the linezolid component of BPaL. Data presented in 2021 demonstrated improvement in the safety and tolerability of the BPaL regimen with alterations in linezolid dosing with sustained favorable outcomes in 89 precent of all participants.
To date, 16 countries or regulatory bodies have approved pretomanid as part of the BPaL regimen for the treatment of patients with highly drug-resistant forms of TB. Regulatory applications have been submitted to another 16 countries and counting by Viatris, TB Alliance’s global commercialization partner for pretomanid as part of the regimen. Viatris is joined by Macleods, Lupin and Hongqi Pharma in holding a non-exclusive license for pretomanid in high-burden countries. More than 30 countries have procured pretomanid for use in the regimen.
The evidence generated from the Nix-TB and ZeNix clinical trials is now being supplemented through operational research programs such as LIFT-TB, and 11 countries are actively enrolling patients in operational research in regions around the world.