NIH funds tuberculosis research advancement centres
pharmafile | April 8, 2022 | News story | Medical Communications |
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has announced four new grant awards, to establish Tuberculosis Research Advancement Centres (TRACS).
The centres will support the development of a next generation of tuberculosis (TB) researchers, providing focused mentoring and funding support for new investigators; opportunities for multidisciplinary and collaborative research; and training in laboratory and clinical settings.
TB is a bacterial disease, and is currently the second leading cause of death, after COVID-19, from a single infectious agent worldwide.
The total funding in the first five years of the grants is $4.3 million.
TB spreads through inhaling tiny droplets from the coughs or sneezes of an infected person. It mainly affects the lungs, but can affect any part of the body, including the abdomen, glands, bones, and nervous system. In 2020, an estimated 10 million people fell ill with TB worldwide. 1.1 million of these were children. WHO has reported that child and adolescent TB is often overlooked by health providers, and can be difficult to diagnose and treat.
Of the 10 million diagnosed with TB in 2020, 1.5 million lives were lost to the disease. NIAID has made alleviating the global burden of TB through research, to discover or improve diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines, a top priority.
This has been outlined in the 2018 Strategic Plan for Tuberculosis Research, which aims “to understand better the immunology and pathogenesis of TB and expanding resources to quickly develop new tools to more effectively combat this disease” using tools including “preventive vaccines and therapies, less-toxic treatment regimens of shorter duration, and rapid, accurate, easily implementable, point-of-care diagnostics.” The report outlines NIAID’s aim “to detect all forms of TB, including latent, disseminated, and drug-resistant (DR) TB, in the diverse populations and age groups affected”.
Ana Ovey
