TB Alliance Announces Four Drug Discovery Collaborations

Early-Stage Research Partnerships Aim to Stock Tuberculosis Drug Pipeline
WASHINGTON--(Business Wire)--
The Global Alliance for TB Drug Development (TB Alliance), a not-for-profit
product development partnership accelerating the discovery and development of
new drugs to fight tuberculosis (TB), announced at the Global Health Council
Conference today that four drug discovery collaboration agreements have been
signed. All four projects have the potential to generate compounds active
against drug-resistant tuberculosis and show promise to advance the science of
TB drug development.

"These partnerships show that the TB Alliance is aggressively increasing the
depth and strength of its portfolio to ensure that promising new TB drug
candidates continue moving toward the clinic," said Dr. Mel Spigelman, CEO of
the TB Alliance. "Tuberculosis is responsible for the death of one person
approximately every 20 seconds - and there is a significant need for novel
medications to combat growing bacterial resistance to current drugs and to
reduce the duration and complexity of therapy."

These recent discovery partnerships include programs with:

* Anacor Pharmaceuticals, a biopharmaceutical company developing small-molecule
therapeutics derived from its boron chemistry platform, to explore a novel
anti-bacterial drug target for use in tuberculosis therapy. Under the agreement,
Anacor will provide the TB Alliance with a non-exclusive, royalty-free worldwide
license for any compounds ultimately registered for a TB indication. Compounds
that attack novel targets have the potential to be effective against
drug-resistant disease.
* Colorado State University to test whether inhibition of menaquinone
biosynthesis - a key component of the energy generation system in M.
tuberculosis (M.tb) - has the potential to eradicate the disease in vivo. The
compounds, first developed as cholesterol synthesis inhibitors, will be
"retro-designed" via cycles of synthetic medicinal chemistry and evaluated as
inhibitors of menaquinone biosynthesis and bacterial growth. The most promising
compounds will be employed in an animal model of TB, and a more advanced
discovery program could be developed if the studies are successful. Inhibition
of menaquinone biosynthesis is a novel approach and therefore compounds that
inhibit this process have the potential to be effective against drug-resistant
disease.
* Institute of Microbiology (IMCAS), a member institute of the Chinese Academy
of Sciences, to discover and develop novel anti-TB agents from natural sources,
including microbial metabolites and traditional Chinese medicines. IMCAS will
test 24 natural product extracts with potential anti-tubercular activity and
will collaborate to further test these extracts, purify and identify the active
components, and develop those that prove most promising. The deficiency in
natural product screening directly against M.tb combined with China's strong
track record of successfully developing new drugs from traditional Chinese
medicines, suggest that such screenings may yield novel active compounds, which
would have the potential to be effective against drug-resistant disease.
* New York Medical College to explore the type 1 topoisomerase (Topo 1) enzyme
that facilitates the unwinding of DNA, which is required during normal cell
processes. (The type II topoisomerase DNA gyrase is already a proven target for
anti-tuberculosis therapy.) The goals of the Topo I program are to determine,
using genetic techniques, whether inhibiting Topo I would kill tuberculosis
bacteria, as for DNA gyrase, and to develop a method to identify Topo I
inhibitors. Since bacterial Topo I is a new drug target, inhibitors that kill
tuberculosis bacteria have potential for use against both drug sensitive and
drug-resistant tuberculosis.

Every year, nearly 9 million people worldwide fall ill with TB and nearly 1.8
million people died from the disease in 2007 alone. It is estimated that the
bacillus that causes TB infects one-third of the world`s population and the
threat of drug-resistance is growing at an alarming rate. TB hits some of the
world`s most vulnerable populations and devastates whole families, villages and
even whole nations. New, faster-acting, simpler drug regimens are critical to
defeating this ancient disease. The TB Alliance is leading this global effort,
discovering and developing new compounds and acting as a catalyst to encourage
information sharing and coordinated efforts among all organizations involved in
finding new treatments.

TB Alliance
Joanna Breitstein, 646-616-8613
joanna.breitstein@tballiance.org

Copyright Business Wire 2009