City researchers’ TB role

The lives of millions of people in the Third World are today in the hands of Dundee researchers after they accepted the challenge of tackling one of the globe’s deadliest infections.

Though medicines have largely eradicated tuberculosis in the western world, more than 1.5 million people – one every 21 seconds – die from the infection every year in developing nations.

Now world-leading experts in medicinal chemistry and biology at Dundee University have teamed up with colleagues at Cape Town University and German pharmaceutical giant Bayer to bring its ravages to an end.

Although effective, current first-line therapies for TB are considered inadequate owing to the fact that they take up to six months to cure patients.

The long treatment regimen contributes to high rates of treatment default, leading to increased disease transmission, drug resistance and death.

“TB is one of the world’s biggest killers, particularly across the developing world, and there is a pressing need to find improved drugs to tackle the disease,” said Dr Simon Green of the Drug Discovery Unit at Dundee University.