The team has developed a series of first-in-class anti-TB drug candidates with a novel mode of action. When used in combination with current TB therapies, these candidates have the potential to:

• reduce multidrug-resistant infections
• increase efficacy of current antibiotics by 50%
• reduce treatment time and relapse

TaBriX and The University of Manchester are working in collaboration with TB Alliance to assess how effective these drug candidates are alone and in combination with the current standard of care.

TB Alliance is a product development partnership that envisions a world where no one dies of tuberculosis. Its mission is to discover, develop and deliver improved, faster-acting, and affordable tuberculosis drug regimens that are available to all who need them. Since its inception in 2000, TB Alliance has promoted the global search for and introduction of new TB regimens, catalysing the field and convening cross-sector partnerships to forge the progress that is urgently needed for better TB treatments.

“All patients with TB require access to highly effective, safe, simple and affordable treatments,” said Mel Spigelman, MD, President and CEO, TB Alliance. “This partnership with TaBriX and UoM will strengthen the pipeline for the next generation of therapies that can help bring an end to this deadly pandemic.”

Professor Lydia Tabernero, the founder of TaBriX, said: “Our vision is seeing a day when serious infections such as tuberculosis are eradicated, and with our drugs. we hope to make this goal an achievable reality.”

“We have developed small-molecule inhibitors that target critical virulence factors to treat TB, but there is the potential of applying this to a wider spectrum of microbial infections.”

“The collaboration with TB Alliance is critically important for the project and we welcome their involvement because they are at the forefront of innovation in the TB space.”

The biological processes targeted by TaBriX’s drug candidates are found in more than 50 other human microbial pathogens, including Non-Tuberculous Mycobacteria (NTM), which cause serious pulmonary infections on the rise worldwide. TaBriX targets are also present in the priority list organisms of the World Health Organisation, responsible for drug-resistant infections. The TaBriX team has demonstrated that their compounds have activity against drug-resistant TB and NTM infections, and are building on this validation to unlock the potential application to other microbial infections in large markets.

The TaBriX team has been supported by the University of Manchester Innovation Factory, an organisation that works with UoM’s academic and student inventors to identify research that has the potential to create value. Once a project that can benefit society is identified, the Innovation Factory helps license the technology or assist with the formation of spin-out companies, as it did with TaBriX.

Andrew Wilkinson, CEO of the Innovation Factory, said: “We are very pleased to support the work Lydia is carrying out in her new University of Manchester spin-out, TaBriX Ltd. The approach the company is taking to tackle antibiotic resistant forms of the TB pathogen is really innovative. We believe that the creation of these new, small-molecule inhibitors that target critical survival factors in TB and other similar pathogens has the potential to create a new family of anti-infective therapeutics which are far less susceptible to the issue of drug-resistance.”

“With the support of the TB Alliance, TaBriX will further assess the potential of these compounds. The Innovation Factory is proud to be working with TaBriX and welcomes the collaboration with TB Alliance.”

Prof Tabernero continued: “One of the ways in which investors and philanthropists can help us eradicate TB and other difficult-to-treat infections, is to fund the development of our drug candidates to reach the clinic as soon as possible. We are close to dramatically changing the impact of these infections on humans, and we are hoping to speak to visionaries who share our dreams for a TB-free future.”

TB is a major health problem worldwide with 25% of the human population already infected with latent TB. Each year, about 10 million people develop active TB and 1.5m die of the disease. One of the main obstacles in the eradication of TB is antibiotic resistance, and there are roughly 500,000 new cases of drug-resistant TB per year.

Standard antibiotic treatments are long (6-18 months), toxic, and have limited efficacy which can lead to relapse and increase drug-resistance. There is a desperate need for new and better treatments, a challenge which TaBriX has accepted.

To find out more about TaBriX or to speak with the team about funding their work, visit or email contact@uominnovationfactory.com. To learn about TB Alliance’s work to advance new regimens, visit or email communications@tballiance.org.

Around 1 in 15 people affected by tuberculosis are likely get the treatable fungal infection aspergillosis according to new research by experts at The University of Manchester and Gulu Referral Hospital, Uganda.

The new knowledge could influence TB programs by helping doctors to identify – and treat – at risk patients.

Professor David Denning from The University of Manchester and Chief Executive of the Global Action Fund for Fungal Infections (GAFFI), said: “These results have global implications for TB programs – simple antibody testing and chest X-rays can diagnose chronic fungal infection after TB.

“The risk of aspergillosis is 30-fold higher in those with a cavity after TB, and these patients need to be actively followed up and treated if they develop this fungal complication.”

TB leaves a cavity in the lungs in about 1 in 4 patients, and so with 7.7 million survivors from TB in the lungs, about 140,000 people worldwide will develop chronic pulmonary aspergillosis (CPA) every year after finishing TB therapy, assuming the results from Uganda are similar elsewhere.

Between 2000 and 2016, around 45 million lives were saved due to effective treatment of pulmonary TB worldwide and 1.6–3.5 million of these would subsequently have developed aspergillosis.

The research published today in the prestigious also found the complication in those with and without HIV infection.

CPA Symptoms, persisting for 3 months, include coughing, coughing up blood, chest pains or night sweats, fever and tiredness.

People with a positive Aspergillus antibody and any of these symptoms have a 93% chance of having CPA with 98% accuracy.

Confirmation requires a chest X-ray showing the characteristic features of pleural thickening and/or a cavity.

Dr Iain Page, Clinical Lecturer at The University of Manchester, who conducted the study over 4 years paid tribute to collaborators in Gulu, Uganda and said:

“I am immensely proud that the doctors and patients in Uganda have led the world in defining this important fungal complication of TB. In other studies, over 75% of those with aspergillosis have died within 5 years and we fear this is currently the case in many countries.”

Image: : Sister Emily at Gulu Referral Hospital

Scientists at The University of Manchester have developed the first non-antibiotic drug to successfully treat tuberculosis in animals.

The team hope the compound –developed after 10 years of painstaking research will be trialled on humans within three to four years.

The drug- which works by targeting Mycobacterium tuberculosis’ defences rather than the bacteria itself - can also take out its increasingly commonly antibiotic resistant strains.

The research funded by the Medical Research Council – is published today in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.

Although a vaccine for TB was developed 100 years ago, one in three people across the world are thought to be infected with the infectious disease.

About 1.7 million die from the bug each year worldwide and 7.3 million people were diagnosed and treated in 2018, up from the 6.3 million in 2016.

It is most common in Africa, India and China, but on the rise in the UK with London often described as the TB capital of Europe.

Patients are forced to take a cocktail of strong antibiotics over 6 to 8 months, often enduring unpleasant side effects with a 20% risk that the disease will return.

But now The University of Manchester team’s discovery has been proven effective in guinea pigs at Rutgers University in the United States.

The animals with acute and chronic TB infection were treated with the compound, which was discovered after investigating dozens of other derivatives and compounds thought to have similar properties.

Professor is the project leader. She said: "The fact that the animal studies showed our compound, which doesn’t kill the bacteria directly, resulted in a significant reduction in the bacterial burden is remarkable.

“For more than 60 years, the only weapon doctors have been able to use against TB is antibiotics. But resistance is becoming an increasingly worrying problem and the prolonged treatment is difficult and distressing for patients.

“And with current treatments, there’s no guarantee the disease will be eliminated: antibiotics do not clear the infection and the risk of being infected with drug-resistant bacteria is very high.

“But by disabling this clandestine bacteria’s defences we’re thrilled to find a way that enhances the chances of the body’s immune system to do its job, and thus eliminate the pathogen.”

Mycobacterium Tuberculosis secretes molecules called Virulence Factors - the cell’s secret weapon -which block out the immune response to the infection, making it difficult to treat.

The team identified one Virulence Factor called MptpB as a suitable target, which when blocked allows white blood cells to kill Mycobacterium Tuberculosis in a more efficient way

Professor Tabernero added: “The great thing about targeting MptpB is that there’s nothing similar in humans – so our blocking compound is not toxic to human cells.

“Because the bacteria hasn’t been threatened directly, it is less likely to develop resistance against this new agent, and this will be a major advantage over current antibiotics, for which bacteria had already become resistant.

“TB is an amazingly difficult disease to treat so we feel this is a significant breakthrough.

”The next stage of our research is to optimise further the chemical compound, but we hope Clinical trials are up to four years away.”

Structure-based design of MptpB inhibitors that reduce multi-drug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis survival and infection burden in vivo is published in the J