Combatting tuberculosis, the “captain of all these men of death”

Antimicrobial resistance is now one of the top public health threats facing humanity.

Caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), tuberculosis is an ancient infectious disease that is still a significant cause of death. Increasing resistance of Mtb to antibiotics in recent years has exacerbated the mortality rate of the disease.

To understand the metabolism of drug-resistant Mtb and develop drugs to combat it, a team of researchers from NTU and the Center for Discovery and Innovation Hackensack Meridian Health in the United States started a transdisciplinary platform, called TOPNet (short for Targeting Oxidative Phosphorylation Network), with the Experimental Drug Development Centre hosted at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research in Singapore.

Recently, a series of compounds developed by TOPNet which could be potential drug candidates to treat drug-resistant TB were licensed for commercialisation to a US-based drug development company.

Read more about this story on the NTU Research Hub.