Researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine have received a $17.4 million, five-year grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to study shorter tuberculosis treatments.
The current treatment can take four to six months. It can cure tuberculosis when patients complete the course, but side effects, cost, and stigma can make it hard to finish.
Four connected projects will study how TB bacteria survive treatment and how medicines such as rifampin and pyrazinamide help shorten it. The teams will also use gene-silencing tools, genome-wide analysis, single-cell technology, and machine learning.
The researchers are not announcing a new shortened treatment yet. They are building the evidence needed to design one that could be simpler and easier for patients to complete.
