Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) has presented three scientific research projects contributing to the fight against tuberculosis, the leading cause of death from infectious disease in the world. The ultimate goal of the three projects, called ERA4TB, TAINT-TB and TCOLF-TC312, is to accelerate the development of new drugs and contribute to the fulfilment of the World Health Organization's (WHO) End TB Strategy 2030.
UC3M presented the advances of these three scientific projects at a special conference held recently at its Leganés Campus on the occasion of International Tuberculosis Day. The event was attended by more than thirty researchers from the university's Bioengineering Department and other people interested in the topic, both in person and online. These scientific consortia, which have a total funding of more than 200 million euros, involve more than 31 partners from academia, the pharmaceutical industry, non-governmental organizations and philanthropic foundations.
ERA4TB
The European Regimen Accelerator for Tuberculosis (ERA4TB) is an ambitious European project aimed at accelerating the development of new antibiotics against all forms of tuberculosis, especially those that are resistant to current treatments. The project seeks to break away from the traditional sequential approach to drug development and adopt a parallel research model to reduce waiting times and optimize the costs of developing new TB treatment regimens. To this end, the project aims to bring at least six new antibiotics into clinical trials and to select therapeutic combinations that offer faster and more globally effective solutions.
"The new combinations are already being identified and will move into clinical development, starting with Phase 1 (PhI) with healthy volunteers. Three PhI studies have already been successfully completed, but for them to reach the market, they have to pass phases 2 and 3, which will take five or six more years," says Alfonso Mendoza, from UC3M's Biomedical Science and Engineering Laboratory (BSEL) research group.
TAINT-TB
The TAINT-TB project is focused on developing contrast agents for computerized tomography capable of specifically marking tuberculosis, which will make it possible to visualize the distribution of the disease in the body and achieve greater precision in the diagnosis and monitoring of the infection. This will facilitate faster diagnoses, even in countries with limited resources, and provide a key tool for monitoring the evolution of the disease. At the same time, by making it possible to accurately quantify the bacterial load, the contrasts developed can be used in the development of new drugs by reducing the time required to evaluate their efficacy, reducing costs and facilitating their commercialization.
"The contrasts that we are developing in the project will serve to improve the quantification, diagnosis and monitoring systems for tuberculosis in animal models in the preclinical development of treatment against tuberculosis," explains Patricio López Expósito, from the UC3M Department of Bioengineering.
TCOLF-TC312
The TCOLF-TC312 project, similarly, seeks to develop a model for studying tuberculosis using humanized mice with CD34+ cells. This will allow us to better understand the interaction between the human immune system and the disease-causing bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Currently, animal models do not fully reflect the complexity of the disease in humans, making it difficult to develop effective treatments. Using systems biology, this project aims to create a more accurate environment for analysing how the host, bacteria and drugs respond in the context of infection. The combination of the humanized immunological model with advanced imaging technologies (such as positron emission tomography and computerized tomography, PET/CT) will allow real-time monitoring of disease progression and response to treatments. This will facilitate the discovery of biomarkers for early diagnosis, the prediction of disease progression and the evaluation of the effectiveness of new therapies, as well as addressing new therapeutic approaches aimed at enhancing the immune response.
"If everything goes well and the results are good, the tool should be available within two years," concludes Santiago Ferrer Bazaga, from the UC3M Department of Bioengineering. Four organizations are participating in the project, three of which are companies, and the role of UC3M is the coordination and scientific direction of the project.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjFZ0TVhIIo