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Gates Grant Awarded for Tuberculosis Genomics Research

Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria (CDC)

Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria (CDC)

The Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI) in Seattle, Washington, said today it received a multi-million dollar grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for research in chemical genomics to identify targets and leads in tuberculosis (TB). The project includes access to a large library of compounds at Eli Lilly and Company.

The grant aims to identify new leads and new drug targets suitable for further drug development, using IDRI’s expertise in molecular and microbial biology. The grant is part of the Gates Foundation’s TB Drug Accelerator program.

IDRI will identify and evaluate promising new drug-like compounds which are active against the human pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis, using medium- and high- throughput screens. The Lilly TB Drug Discovery Initiative, of which IDRI is a member, will provide IDRI with access to a library of some 800,000 compounds belonging to Eli Lilly and Company.

According to the World Health Organization, 1.7 million people died of TB in 2009, with 9.4 million new cases reported that year. WHO says about half a million cases are resistant to the multiple drugs that once effectively treated the disease.

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