Tuberculosis (TB) has claimed more than 1 billion human lives in the past 250 years and remains the leading cause of death from an infectious disease. TB was the first disease for which combination therapy was adopted and the current standard of care, introduced in the 1980s, is a four-drug regimen administered for 6 months for drug-susceptible TB. This regimen is menaced by wide-spread resistance and drug-related side-effects. Drug-resistant TB previously required an ad hoc treatment lasting 18 months or more, however, a better, shorter treatment became available thanks to the approval of bedaquiline, a new drug with a novel mechanism of action. There are currently 20 TB drug candidates in clinical trials and the hope of a new combination treatment for all forms of TB is thus real. This hope will be reviewed and critically appraised in my presentation.

Bio
Professor Sir Stewart Cole KCMG FRS
Institut Pasteur, Paris AND Ineos Oxford Institute

Stewart Cole is an internationally renowned microbiologist working in global health. He has made outstanding contributions to HIV and HPV genomics, and antimicrobial resistance research. However, he is most highly acclaimed for his pioneering work on the pathogenicity, evolution and genomics of the mycobacteria responsible for tuberculosis (TB) and leprosy. His team harnessed genome-derived information to accelerate TB drug and vaccine discovery and development. Candidate drugs that arose from his work are currently in clinical trials. Throughout his career he has strived to translate findings from his discovery research into interventions that benefit human health. Professor Cole is a past president of the Institut Pasteur, Paris, having previously led the Global Health Institute at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. He is currently the executive chair of the Ineos Oxford Institute for antimicrobial research and academic leader of the IHI-funded consortium, ERA4TB, the European regimen accelerator for tuberculosis.