Lilly Working with Research Team in Taiwan to Fight TB
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The Lilly TB Drug Discovery Initiative will be working with a research institution in Taiwan, Academia Sinica, in order to screen new drugs used to treat tuberculosis (TB). The disease seemed to have been a thing of the past as it was prevalent in the 50s and 60s but alas it has begun resurgence in recent years.
Not only have the cases of TB grown but the disease has become drug resistant and even multi-drug resistant. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that there were an estimated 9.27 million cases globally in 2007 up from 8.3 cases in 2000 and 6.6 million in 1990. This steady increase must be dealt with before it becomes a worldwide pandemic.
The Lilly TB Drug Discovery Initiative is made up of the Eli Lilly Company and the Infectious Disease Research Institute. Additional collaboration includes participation from The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is part of the U.S. National Institute of Health. The group is focused on the research, development and discovery of new drugs to treat tuberculosis.
Because there are strains of TB, actually 30 to 40 percent, that are untreatable at this time researchers are open to as many different medications that they can get their hands on. There is such an immense need for drugs to treat TB, especially when some strains require multiple drugs for treatment, no one pharmaceutical company can do it all. The group feels that the development of TB drugs is so complex that not one single company or institution has the resources or expertise to do it alone.
The president of Academia Sinica, Dr. Chi-Huey Wong, brings his expertise as one of the most highly regarded chemists in the world to the Lilly TB Drug Discovery Initiative. And while Dr. Wong adds his knowledge to the project, the combination of efforts by the different groups provides a proprietary library of more than two million different compounds to work with as well as advanced technologies.
The Lilly TB Drug Discovery Initiative is a public-private not-for-profit group whose main focus it to bring health experts from around the world together in finding drugs to fight tuberculosis. The Academia Sinica was founded in 1928 and is one of the most respected academic institutions in Taiwan.
Rounding out the group, the Infectious Disease Research Institute is a not-for-profit organization based in Seattle, Washington. It is dedicated to the research and development of products “to prevent, detect and treat the infectious diseases of poverty.”
The company behind it all, Lilly, is a leading pharmaceutical company based in Indianapolis, Indiana. For this project it has opened up its access of more than a half million compounds from its library. It has contributed $15 million and continues to work to prevent the spread of TB and save lives across the world by working with 18 partners in five continents.