04 Mar AstraZeneca joins fight against tuberculosis
Julia Kollewe, Guardian.co.uk
AstraZeneca has joined a consortium to fight tuberculosis around the world with French rival Sanofi-aventis, the University of Cambridge and other research organisations.
The More Medicines for Tuberculosis (MM4TB) consortium intends to develop new drugs for successful and shorter treatment for TB. The École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), along with the universities of Pavia in Italy, and Uppsala in Sweden, are also among the groups involved. The consortium will be funded by a €16m (£13.5m) EU grant and led by TB expert Professor Stewart Cole, of EPFL.
He told the Guardian: “This is one of the strongest consortiums ever put together. It is led by academia but with the drug discovery knowhow of big pharma and biotechs.”